Tiny Buddha

Tag: Anger

  • How I Got Free from the Trap of Resentment

    How I Got Free from the Trap of Resentment

    “Jerry, there is some bad in the best of people and some good in the worst of people. Look for the good!” ~George Chaky, my grandfather

    I was seven when he said that to me. It would later become a guiding principle in my life.

    My grandfather was twenty-one when he came to the US with his older brother, Andrew. Shortly afterward, he married Maria, my grandmother, and they had five children. William, the second youngest, died at the age of seven from an illness.

    One year later they lost all of their savings during the Great Depression of 1929 when many banks closed. Two years afterward, my grandmother died from a stroke at the age of thirty-six.

    As I grew older and learned about the many hardships my grandfather and family of origin had endured, his encouragement to look for the good in people would have a profound impact on me. It fueled a keen interest in trying to understand why people acted the way they did. In retrospect, it also had a lot to do with my becoming a therapist and author.

    Easier Said Than Done

    As a professional, I am able to objectively listen to my therapy clients’ stories with compassion and without judgment. However, in my personal life, I’ve often struggled to see the good in certain people, especially some elementary school teachers who physically and emotionally abused me and male peers who made fun of my small size.

    In my youth I often felt humiliated, but not ashamed. I knew that for them to treat me that way, there must have been something wrong with them. But it still hurt.

    I struggled with anger and resentment for many years. In my youth, I was taught that anger was a negative emotion. When I expressed it, certain teachers and my parents punished me. So, I stuffed the anger.

    I Didn’t Know What I Didn’t Know

    When I was twelve, I made a conscious decision to build walls to protect myself from being emotionally hurt. At the time, it was the best that I could do. Walls can give one a sense of safety, but walls also trap the pain inside and make it harder to trust and truly connect with others.

    About that same time, I made a vow to myself that I frequently revisited: “When I get the hell out of this house and I am fortunate to have my own family, I will never talk to them the way my parents talked to each other and my sister and me.” I knew how I didn’t want to express my emotions, but I didn’t know how to do so in a positive and healthy manner.

    Stuffing emotions is like squeezing a long, slender balloon and having the air, or anger, bulge in another place. In my late twenties, individual and couples counseling slowly helped me begin to recognize how much anger and resentment I had been carrying inside. They would occasionally leak out in the tone of my voice, often with those I wasn’t angry with, and a few times the anger came out in a frightening eruption.

    “Resentment is the poison we pour for others that we drink ourselves.” ~Anonymous

    I heard that phrase at a self-help group for families of alcoholics. After the meeting, I approached the person who shared it and said to her, “I never heard that before.” She smiled and replied, “I’ve shared that a number of times at meetings where you were present.” I responded, “I don’t doubt that, but I never heard it until tonight!”

    The word “resentment” comes from the Latin re, meaning “again,” and sentire, meaning “to feel.” When we hold onto resentment, we continue to “feel again” or “re-feel” painful emotions. It’s like picking at a scab until it bleeds, reopening a wound.

    Nowhere have I ever read that we should like being treated or spoken to unfairly. However, when we hold on to resentment, self-righteous indignation, or other uncomfortable emotions, it ties us to the past.

    Holding onto resentment and grudges can also increase feelings of helplessness. Waiting for or expecting others to change gives them power over my thoughts and feelings. Many of those who I have held long-standing resentment for have died and yet can still have a hold on me.

    When we let go of resentment, it frees us from much of the pain and discomfort. As author John E. Southard said, “The only people with whom you should try to get even with are those who have helped you.”

    I’ve continued to learn how to set healthier and clearer boundaries without building walls. I’ve learned that I don’t have to accept unacceptable behavior from anyone, and I don’t have to go to every argument I am invited to, even if the argument is only inside my head.

    Still, for a long time, despite making significant progress, periodically the anger and resentment would come flooding back. And the thought of forgiving certain people stuck in my craw.

    When people would try to excuse others’ behavior with statements like “They were doing the best they knew how,” I’d say or think, “But they should never have become teachers” or “My sister and I had to grow up emotionally on our own!”

    Forgiving Frees the Forgiver

    For a long time now, I have started my day with the Serenity Prayer: (God) Grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. It has helped me try to focus on today and what I can control—how I think, feel, and act. Sometimes I get stuck, and all I can say is, “Help me let go of this anger.”

    “When we forgive, we heal. When we let go, we grow.” ~Dalai Lama

    I frequently hear the voices of many people who have helped, supported, and nourished me. I hear my wife’s late sister, MaryEllen, a Venerini nun, saying, “Jerry, the nuns treated you that way because that was the way they were probably treated by their superiors.” She validated my pain and planted another seed that slowly grew.

    I’ve also heard that “hurt people hurt people.” At times, I would still lash out at innocent people when I was hurting. I desperately wanted to break this generational cycle. I’ve learned that I don’t have to wait for other people to change in order to feel better.

    I am learning that everyone has a story, and I can practice forgiveness without excusing what they did or said.

    Forgiving is not forgetting. Forgiving liberates me from the burden of resentment, helping me focus on connecting with supportive people and continuing to heal. Letting go of resentment cuts the ties that bind me to the past hurts. It helps me be present today where I can direct my time and energy toward living in the present instead of replaying old pain.

    For the past year I have made a conscious effort to start each day by asking my Higher Power, whom I choose to call God, “Help me be grateful, kind, and compassionate to myself and others today and remember that everyone has their own struggles.” This has become one of the biggest turning points in my travels through life.

    You Can’t Pour from an Empty Cup

    I have learned that taking care of myself is one of the most effective ways to stop resentment from building up. When I neglect one or more of my needs over time, I’m quicker to snap, less patient, and more likely to take things personally. Who benefits from my self-neglect? Not me, and certainly not my spouse, children, coworkers, or others. When I am H.A.L.T. (hungry, angry, lonely or tired) or S.O.S. (stressed out severely), I usually don’t like being around me either.

    Self-compassion also weakens resentment’s hold, making it easier to be compassionate with others. Remembering that we’re all works in progress helps me treat myself and others more gently.

    I often think about my grandfather’s words, “Look for the good.” Self-care and self-compassion help me to see the good in myself as well as in others. I can dislike someone’s actions or tone of voice and also recognize they’re not really about me.

    I actually have a Q-tip (representing “quit taking it personally”) taped on my desk to remind me that someone else’s actions or words are likely the result of their own struggles. It helps me to “catch myself,” and instead of taking things personally, I try to remember that everyone has a story.

    Gratitude Puts Everything in Perspective

    There are days when I am faced with great or even overwhelming challenges, when it would be easy to default to anger—with other people or with life itself. On those days, I might notice a beautiful sunrise or feel touched by the love and kindness of others. Practicing gratefulness helps me to see life as both difficult and good. It is like an emotional and spiritual savings account, building reserves that help me to be more resilient during the rough patches in life, even when I feel wronged.

    Specifically focusing on what I am grateful for each day also helps me heal and gives me periods of serenity. It empowers me to try to approach my interactions with others in a warm and caring manner while respecting my and their personal boundaries, which keeps small misunderstandings from growing into resentment.

    Gratefulness and compassion toward myself and others take practice. It’s not a one-and-done thing. It’s like learning any new skill—the more I practice, the more it becomes a positive habit and feels more like second nature.

    Without repeated practice, old, undesirable thoughts and patterns can come back. When I neglect self-care, I am most vulnerable to quickly regress.

    I also need to be vigilant when things seem to be going well within and around me. I can become overly confident, trying to coast along and slack off from practicing gratitude and compassion.

    I have been unlearning many things that no longer work for me. I have unlearned “Practice makes perfect,” replacing it with “Practice makes progress, and I will do my best to continue to learn, grow, and be grateful, one day at a time.”

    I don’t always get it right, but every time I choose compassion, understanding, or gratitude over resentment, I am more at peace and more connected to everyone around me.

  • Raised on Their Best Intentions—Healed on My Own Terms

    Raised on Their Best Intentions—Healed on My Own Terms

    “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” ~Kahlil Gibran

    There are two versions of me.

    There’s the one I am now—the grounded, present woman who holds space for others, who guides people toward healing, who walks barefoot through the grass and whispers affirmations while sipping her coffee.

    And then there’s the other version. The one who barely made it. The one who used to stare into her fridge not out of hunger but as a distraction from the ache in her chest. The one who didn’t feel at home in her body. The one who was certain no one could ever understand the weight she carried, let alone help lift it.

    If you’ve ever felt pain that rewired your entire being, you know:

    Trauma doesn’t just live in the mind.

    It takes root in the bones, in the pauses between conversations, in the way you flinch when someone raises their voice—even slightly.

    For years, I was operating on autopilot. From the outside, I seemed fine. But internally, I was haunted by invisible wounds and unspoken memories.

    Then came the moment I will never forget—when I confronted the very people who gave me life.

    I was in my twenties. I’d been carrying years of resentment, confusion, and heartache. Every harsh word, every time I felt small—it all built up inside me.

    And I finally let it spill out during an emotionally charged conversation. I brought up a pattern that had deeply impacted me, hoping to be heard.

    I expected remorse, maybe even repair.

    But instead, I heard: “We did the best we could.” It was calm, maybe even resigned. It wasn’t unkind, but it felt like a door closing instead of opening. In that moment, I felt both understanding and a quiet ache, realizing we weren’t going to meet in the middle.

    Those six words didn’t offer relief. They didn’t soften the years of damage. Because understanding your parents’ limitations doesn’t erase your pain. But it does offer you a choice:

    To carry it forward. Or to finally put it down.

    That was the turning point.

    I realized I didn’t want to live stuck anymore—stuck in old stories, like believing I had to suppress my emotions to keep the peace, or that loyalty meant silence; stuck in shame and in patterns I didn’t choose. I wanted to heal. Not just for myself, but for every version of me that had felt unseen.

    So I started to write.

    Not for anyone else, but for me.

    When I couldn’t speak the truth out loud, I wrote it down. My journals became confessionals. My pen, a lifeline. My pain, my teacher.

    Eventually, I found tools that helped me dig even deeper—meditation, somatic work, subconscious reprogramming, hypnotherapy.

    I learned that the subconscious mind is like a computer. It stores everything you’ve ever believed about yourself—especially the painful parts. If you don’t update the programming, you’ll keep replaying the same loop:

    I’m not enough. It’s my fault. Love has to be earned. I must stay small to be safe.

    And when you realize that you can change that inner script? That’s when everything shifts.

    In 2020, I became a certified hypnotherapist. But truthfully, that was just the official title. My real training began the day I stopped running from myself.

    Through that work, I began to rewire old beliefs, release trauma stored in my body, and speak to my younger self with compassion instead of criticism.

    I finally started to feel free. Not perfect. Not enlightened. But freer.

    Free to cry and not apologize for it. Free to take up space. Free to stop fixing everyone else so I could finally tend to myself.

    Today, I help others do the same.

    Not because I have all the answers, but because I remember what it felt like to not even know which questions to ask.

    And if you’re reading this right now, I want to say something I wish someone had said to me: You are not broken. You are not behind. You are not unworthy. You are a soul who has walked through fire—and you’re still here.

    Healing is not linear.

    You will have days where you feel like you’ve regressed, where the sadness feels fresh, where you question everything. That’s okay.

    Progress isn’t perfection. It’s presence. And your presence—your willingness to look at your pain instead of running from it—is what will change your life.

    You don’t need to hustle your way to healing. You just need to return to yourself.

    So here’s what I’ve learned, in case it helps you:

    1. Triggers are teachers in disguise. They point to wounds that need tending. For me, being interrupted or talked over would trigger an intense emotional response—one rooted in earlier experiences where my voice didn’t feel valued. I also noticed that certain tones of voice, especially condescending ones, could instantly make me feel small.

    2. You are allowed to feel anger at those who hurt you and compassion for the fact they didn’t know better.

    3. The body holds trauma, but it also holds the key to release. Pay attention to your breath. Your posture. Your gut feelings.

    4. You can forgive and still hold boundaries, like saying no without over-explaining or stepping away from emotionally unsafe conversations. I’ve also created space by recognizing when it’s not my role to carry someone else’s emotional process—especially if it comes at the cost of my well-being.

    5. You can grieve and still grow.

    And most of all: You can rewrite your story at any time. Because you are not your past.  You are the author of your next chapter.

    So let it be one of reclamation.

    Let it be the moment you stop shrinking and start rising. Let it be the chapter where you stop surviving and start living.

    You are the light you’ve been looking for.

  • Sometimes Not Forgiving Is a Powerful Step Toward Healing

    Sometimes Not Forgiving Is a Powerful Step Toward Healing

    “You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure. So use that anger. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it.” ~Maya Angelou

    My mother left when I was five. Dad told me that for a little while I stopped talking, which is hard to imagine because now I never shut up.

    Apparently, I disappeared into myself. The doctors called it selective mutism. Two years later, my father’s second wife, Trish, would try to hug me, but I froze, arms pinned to my side, rigid against her affection.

    When I was older and I asked Dad what happened, he said he and Mom had been having problems, so she went on a bird-watching cruise to the Seychelles. During a stopover, she met a rugged, bearded, successful world wildlife photographer in the lobby of an African hotel. Frank and Patricia fell in love and immediately left their spouses and kids.

    In time, my mother became a talented photographer in her own right. She and Frank traveled continents to capture award-winning photos of animals for National Geographic and the like. Together, they published beautiful coffee table books.

    In 2004, both Patricia and Frank died within a month of each other. Frank from cancer, Patricia in a fiery car crash. My sister told me state troopers found a blood-stained snapshot of all five kids inside Patricia’s wallet. The picture was of my three brothers she’d had with my father and my sister and me, who she adopted as babies from two different moms, years after she got her tubes tied.

    “Girls,” she told my father. “I need two girls.”

    Years ago, I looked up Patricia’s obituary online. I found one attached to a blog written by a fan. At the end of a glowing description of her renowned career was a mention of Frank and that she was “mother to three boys.”

    No mention of me or my sister. Whoever wrote the obituary decided we didn’t exist, or maybe they never knew we existed. My sister, who’d stayed in touch with Patricia, seemed okay with the omission. She insisted the picture in Patricia’s wallet proved she thought about us.

    “And your comment on the blog was mean,” she told me.

    “With all due respect,” I wrote in the blog comments, “Patricia left her five kids” (I’m her youngest daughter) “to go sow her wildlife photographer oats. So yes, she was a talented photographer, but she wasn’t a mother.”

    In one picture I found of Patricia and Frank online after they died, Frank had his arm around her in front of a small white tent in Africa.

    She was leaning her head against his shoulder, smiling and content. Her face was plump and ruddy and naturally beautiful. Her short, dark, curly hair was windblown, and she was wearing a tan photo vest, khaki shorts, and chunky hiking boots.

    In her former life, Patricia was a full-fledged Audrey Hepburn type. An upper-middle-class, small-town New Jersey suburbanite with cinch-waisted elegant dresses, black heels, and pearls. In one Polaroid, my mother smiled for the camera as she carried a paper-footed crown roast to the perfect holiday table set for her husband and five kids.

    I was two months old when my parents adopted me. I never once resented my birth mom for giving me up (I found her in 2016, and we’re close).

    When I was old enough to understand how hard it must be for a woman to give up a child, I felt sorry for my birth mother. I knew women who gave up their baby did it out of love and desperation. And that it probably ripped their heart out forever. I knew long before I knew anything about my birth mom that giving me away wasn’t personal.

    It was selfless.

    But mothers who roam the globe with a lover, who give birth to three boys, get their tubes tied, and then adopt two girls to complete the set don’t leave their children for selfless reasons.

    They leave because motherhood was a mistake. Because domesticity felt like prison.

    “The ugly ducklings” Patricia once told my father about me and my middle brother. Mike stuttered and, like me, wore thick glasses.

    When I was older, I’d drag information out of my dad about Patricia.  He never wanted us to know Mike and I were her least favorites. That we weren’t perfect enough.

    During my sophomore year in college, I sent my mother a short letter. “I never understood why you left the family. Please help me understand.” Then I told her what was going on in my life.

    “It was your father’s lifestyle,” she wrote back. “The drinking and fancy parties and spending too much money. It wasn’t you. We were fighting all the time. It wasn’t about you kids.”

    Except that when you leave your kids, it is about the kids.

    That was our only contact until my late twenties during my youngest brother Chris’s wedding. Patricia smiled awkwardly as we walked toward each other in the hotel reception hall.

    We stood in front of each other but didn’t hug. She smiled, looked nervous, and told me, “Look how beautiful you are!” For the next few hours, we chatted about the wedding, my job, and my husband, who sat next to me.

    Frank sat between us at our table. Polite but protective. Privately, I was furious at how nonchalant my once-mother seemed. Of course there was too much to unpack, and a wedding wasn’t the place. But Patricia acted like we’d simply lost touch.

    A few years ago, when my husband and I were talking about that day, he told me that at some point I whispered to Frank, “Tell Patricia I want nothing to do with her.” I couldn’t stand the façade for one more second. So I went silent.

    I don’t remember saying that. But I’m sure I did. Because if my mother had wanted to be in my life, when she got my letter during college, she would have said so.

    In 1998, when I became a mom, the resentment for Patricia I’d managed to mostly bury resurfaced with a vengeance.

    I was horrified that a mother would leave her children. I felt a maternal protectiveness with my own daughter so visceral and overwhelming that rage bubbled up for my own mother.

    I pictured my five-year-old daughter coming home from kindergarten. Getting off the bus and running to hug her dad. I pictured her giggling and holding her vinyl Blue’s Clues lunch box. My husband handing her gummy snacks and a juice box in the kitchen. I pictured him scooping her up and sitting her on the couch next to him. My daughter’s happy feet swinging.

    “Where’s Mommy?” she asks as she sips her juice box and her blueberry eyes sparkle.

    “Honey, Daddy needs to tell you something. Mommy is um, gone, and she’s not coming back. It’s not your fault, honey, really, it isn’t. You didn’t do anything wrong. But Mommy is, well, Mommy is confused even though she really, really loves you.”

    Years ago, I decided that I can’t do with my mother what therapists and clergy suggest when someone hurts us.

    “Work to forgive. It’s not about saying what they did was okay. It’s about letting go of anger and resentment. When you do, you’ll feel better. Stop giving over your power to bitterness.”

    But the abandoned five-year-old child in me refuses to forgive my mother. I could, but I won’t. Not because I’m consumed with anger. I’m not. Because forgiving, however that looks (journaling, prayers, letters to Patricia I never send), feels disingenuous.

    “I forgive you” feels like a lie.

    Over the years my hurt and anger toward my mother have shifted. Not to forgiveness exactly, but to a new understanding that only ambitious woman-turned-mothers understand.

    Because I was that mother.

    After I had my daughter, I left the workforce as a career professional, ambitious but constantly told daily during my pregnancy, “Once you see that baby, nothing, I mean nothing else will matter.”

    Three months after maternity leave, I went back to work part time. Six months later, I left for good.

    I’d been diagnosed with fibromyalgia and was racked with chronic body aches and brain fog. My babysitter and I were at odds, but mostly I left because I “should” be at home. My husband never pressured me. I pressured me. Judgmental parents didn’t help.

    During my mother’s era (the 1950s), after women graduated college, they got married and had kids. They never talked about their own needs. There were no mom group confessionals. Ambition and having an identity crisis weren’t things. Taboo.

    Women sucked up their angst and exhaustion with coffee and uppers, with martinis and Valium (“Mommy’s little helper”). Smile. Nod. Suffer.

    It wasn’t until the nineties that books came out about motherhood and ambivalence. About loving your kid but hating x, y, z. Suddenly the floodgates opened, and mothers got raw and honest. (Remember the book The Three Martini Playdate?)

    I struggled with being grateful but bored at home. With craving an identity outside of motherhood. Of course I loved my daughter. I went through surgery and months of infertility procedures to get her.

    My child was everything to me, but not everything for me. When I became a parent, gradually, a tiny part of me understood why my mother left.

    And in that, accepting my mixed bag of emotions softened my pain and rage.

    Unlike my mother, I’d had a thriving career and my own identity for over twenty years. But Patricia went from college to marriage to motherhood. She’d skipped over herself and who, it turned out, she wanted to be. Unburdened by domesticity, free to roam the world.

    I realized that if my mother had stayed, she would have resented her kids and the life she felt called to embrace. Her resentment might have been more damaging than the abandonment.  

    Still, forgiveness isn’t always the answer. Saying “I forgive you” has to feel sincere. It has to come from a place of genuine release. A willingness to see the harm and accept its wrongness, then fully let it go. Into the ethers, washed from our heart and psyche.

    My vision of my mother is less villain now and more a woman who should never have given in to society’s pressure to have kids. As soon as she got married, she pushed my dad to start a family, even after he told her over and over they weren’t ready financially.

    It’s ironic that after she died, she left a chunk of money to Planned Parenthood. She knew. Motherhood isn’t for everyone.

    Forgiveness is nuanced, yet it’s been taught throughout the ages as magical in its transformative powers. “Forgive, let go, and you’ll be free.” And more often than not, that’s true.

    But for me, I owe it to my five-year-old self not to completely forgive my mother. Gentle non-forgiveness is what I call it.

    Most of my destructive bitterness is gone. But if I’m honest, some anger still sits in me. Because I want it there. Protective. Righteous. But no longer seething. Anger wrapped in necessary truth. That my mother was selfish. That my mother did real damage.

    I guess holding on to some anger feels like I’m choosing to be an advocate for my five-year-old self. But mostly I think it’s to avoid the harder emotions of pain and rejection. And because letting go of all my anger feels fake.

    For me, being authentic sometimes means accepting that not all anger fades. And that it’s okay. (In fact, allowing anger instead of repressing it can actually be beneficial for our health, according to psychologist Jade Wu, so long as we don’t act aggressively.)

    In the wake of my mother abandoning our family, she left behind five broken kids, all of whom bear emotional scars. Scars that showed up in devastating ways. Addiction, cruelty, despair, loneliness, low self-esteem, hoarding, attachment issues.

    I know ultimately my mother needed to be free. That staying would have done more harm than good. But children aren’t puppies to surrender when caregiving gets too hard.

    There were dire consequences to my mother leaving to find happiness. Irreparable damage. I saw it. I felt it. Trust destroyed. And because of that, I can never fully forgive.

    “I pray you heal from things no one ever apologized for.” ~Nakeia Homer

  • How to Forgive That Earlier Version of You

    How to Forgive That Earlier Version of You

    “Forgiveness is an action, which your mind can never understand. Your mind’s sole intent is to balance the books. In issues of morality, it only wants to get even. Therefore, practice forgiveness every day if only in trivial matters. This is an excellent way of tempering the mind and empowering the heart.” ~Glenda Green

    Recently, seemingly out of nowhere, I had thoughts about a relationship that ended many years ago. I started to remember some things I had said, emotions I had felt, and things I had done. I cringed.

    What could suddenly make me think of those things now? I pondered it for a few minutes, then put it out of my mind. But when I had those same thoughts a few weeks later, I decided to take a deeper look.

    That deeper look took me back even further to another relationship now decades gone by. And I cringed some more. This time not just because of things I had said or done. This time I winced at the painful experiences I’d endured and the hurtful words others had said.

    Why this unexpected trip down memory lane?

    After much reflection, I concluded that those memories were surfacing now because I was still holding onto that energy somewhere in my body and energetic field. They were coming up now because they were ready to be released.

    For that, forgiveness for myself was required.

    I cringed at those memories because the person I am now, in this present moment, would not have said or done those things. Forgiveness was possible when I realized that the person I was then could not have done any differently.

    Here’s why: Our thoughts and actions are a function not only of our level of awareness but also the sum total of every assumption, belief, and experience we have had up until that moment. That past version of me was at a different level of awareness—one shaped by years of unprocessed abuse, anger, and trauma.

    The years of personal inner work I have done since that time, and the greater awareness that resulted, brought me to this current moment of forgiveness as the next step in my own evolution.

    It’s easy to beat ourselves up when we realize we haven’t completely let something go. I am certainly guilty of this. Many of us have done years of inner work, only to discover that a single issue could have multiple layers yet to clear.

    If we still have an emotional charge around an event or person from our past, we can start by forgiving the fact that we are still emotionally triggered by it.

    We can forgive ourselves for the role we played in that unhealthy dynamic. Then we can forgive that partner for the hurtful and destructive thoughts, words, and actions that occurred.

    Forgiveness does not mean condoning the actions of another. It also doesn’t mean forgetting what happened or putting a superficial coat of positivity on that person or situation.

    Instead, forgiveness is about accepting whatever happened and reclaiming peace for ourselves.

    Forgiveness is a gift we give to ourselves. We can forgive ourselves for not knowing better at the time. We can forgive ourselves for having carried the mental and emotional burden for so long.

    Those things, however unpleasant, happened for a reason. We gained valuable wisdom by having had those experiences. They shaped us as the people we are now.

    So, how do we forgive?

    Simply telling ourselves, “I forgive you” as a thought is often not enough. We need to believe that we deserve forgiveness and then feel that forgiveness, anchoring it in our body. The more senses we involve in this process, the better.

    Here’s a six-step process to release the stuck energy around forgiveness. For best results, go to a peaceful place in nature where you can take a walk.

    Step #1: Visualize the person or event as an energy you’ve been holding in the pit of your stomach. It is a hard, dense energy.

    Step #2: Begin your leisurely walk. As you walk, tune into this dense energy in your gut that represents that person or event that is calling for forgiveness. Feel it.

    Step #3: Now visualize the peaceful, vibrant, and loving energy coming from the natural world all around you—the sun, the wind, the trees, plants, and flowers. Breathe that energy into your body and feel it fill your lungs and nourish every cell. With a few more deep breaths, imagine that the healing energy from nature has filled your heart space as well.

    Step #4: Next, direct that loving, peaceful energy from your heart down into your belly. You can place a hand on your stomach to assist with this process. Visualize the loving energy from your heart and hand softening and breaking up those hard energies housed in your belly.

    Step #5: After a few minutes, as you continue walking, imagine that each step you take loosens the dense energy even more, allowing it to slowly move down from your belly and into your legs with each step. Continue walking until you sense that those particles of dense energy are completely out of your belly and are now at the bottom of your feet, ready to be released.

    Step #6: Find a place in nature to stop and remove your shoes. Place your bare feet on grass, soil, or sand. With your feet on the earth, visualize sending that energy from the bottom of your feet down into the earth, where it is instantly neutralized and composted. Give gratitude to the earth and to your body for assisting in this forgiveness and release process.

    This forgiveness practice is equally powerful—and important—when it is directed at yourself. Rather than bringing to mind a specific event or person from your past, you can visualize the person you once were, starting with ten years ago.

    Recall how you lived your life back then, including how you thought about yourself, about the people around you, and about the world at large. Notice what has changed from who you were then to who you are now.

    Forgive that earlier version of you. You did the best you could given your circumstances and level of awareness at the time.

    Visualize the energy of that former you moving down your body and out the bottom of your feet. Let nature take it for composting.

    Now breathe in more peaceful, healing energy from nature. Let it fill your lungs, your heart, and your belly.

    To conclude the practice, look around you with fresh eyes. Take in your surroundings as if for the first time. Feel appreciation for the stronger, wiser person you are now.

  • How to Embrace Elective (not Mandatory) Forgiveness After Trauma

    How to Embrace Elective (not Mandatory) Forgiveness After Trauma

    Do I need to forgive my abusive mother to let go of the past?

    This is the question I found myself grappling with when I started to recover from the pain of childhood neglect. For most of my childhood, I did not have access to a consistent adult who valued me. As a result, I believed that I had no value, and I lived my life according to this belief.

    I treated myself as an invaluable being by denying my needs, catering to everyone else’s, and engaging in relationships with people who sought to benefit from my low self-worth. My physical and mental health suffered. I felt trapped in a cage that I hadn’t built as a child but had taken up residency in as an adult.

    My childhood trauma had negatively impacted my life for over thirty years, and I desperately needed to discover what would help me to move forward. So many people praised forgiveness as a cure-all with moral superiority. They all encouraged  me to forgive my mother.

    Was forgiveness needed to recover from trauma? I turned to experts—therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and doctors—to find an answer. Their responses? Mixed.

    One therapist told me, “If you can forgive, you should. Forgiveness is the key to healing.”

    A psychologist admitted, “I’ve seen clients who forgave and those who didn’t, and honestly, I haven’t noticed a difference in outcomes.”

    A doctor insisted, “Everyone needs to forgive. Holding grudges harms your mental and physical health.”

    And a psychiatrist offered a more nuanced view: “It all depends on what you need. If forgiveness were a proven cure-all, we’d recommend it universally.”

    The lack of consensus was frustrating. I was desperate to move forward, to let go of the past, and I needed to know—was forgiveness the answer? For the next three years, I delved into this question, interviewing clinicians, scholars, religious leaders, and trauma survivors.

    Here’s what I discovered: Forgiveness is not a one-size-fits-all solution, and it’s never something you should feel pressured or obligated to do. In fact, if you are forced into forgiving, it doesn’t work at all.

    The Power of Elective Forgiveness

    What I learned is that forgiveness can be incredibly freeing—but only if it’s optional, not a requirement. Elective forgiveness is about giving yourself permission to decide what’s best for you. It means you can forgive, not forgive, or even find that forgiveness happens naturally over time without the intention to forgive.

    For me, elective forgiveness became a way to take back control of my healing journey. I stopped worrying about whether I should forgive and instead focused on what I needed to feel safe, process my emotions, and move forward. This approach lifted the weight of mandatory forgiveness off my shoulders and allowed me to make space for whatever felt authentic in my recovery.

    How to Embrace Elective Forgiveness

    If you’re wondering how elective forgiveness might help you let go of the past, here are a few steps that worked for me:

    1. Prioritize your safety.

    For years, I didn’t feel safe having contact with my mother. To protect myself, I chose to establish boundaries, including a five-year estrangement, while we both worked on ourselves in therapy. Only when I felt safe did I consider reconnecting, and even then, forgiveness wasn’t on the table until I felt ready.

    To assess your safety, ask yourself:

    • Am I prioritizing my need to feel safe over the pressure to forgive?
    • Do I understand that forgiveness isn’t the same as reconciliation? (You can forgive without reconciling and vice versa.)
    • What boundaries do I need to feel safe, and how can I communicate them to my offender?

    2. Welcome unforgiveness.

    At one point, I questioned if my inability to forgive was a sign of failure. But I eventually realized that unforgiveness wasn’t a “stage” to get through—it was a valid and necessary part of my recovery.

    Unforgiveness can be a place to rest, reflect, and process your emotions. It doesn’t have to lead to forgiveness—it can be the endpoint or simply part of the journey. The key is to allow yourself to be where you are without judgment.

    3. Let yourself feel anger.

    For a long time, I suppressed my anger because I was taught it was a “bad” emotion. But denying my anger only kept me stuck. Once I gave myself permission to feel it, my anger began to evolve into grief and, eventually, a sense of peace.

    Here’s how you can work with anger:

    • Write a letter to the person who hurt you, expressing your anger. (You don’t need to send it.)
    • Notice where anger shows up in your body. Is it in your chest, your stomach, your fists? What happened when you notice how anger feels in your body?
    • Move your body in ways that match your anger—punch a pillow, stomp your feet, or go for a run. Ask your body, “What do you want to do with this anger?”

    4. Trust the process.

    I’ll admit I’m annoyed when I hear therapists say, “Trust the process.” I want to trust the outcome! But recovery doesn’t work like that. Elective forgiveness isn’t about achieving a specific result—it’s about allowing yourself to explore, feel, and grow without knowing exactly where you’ll end up.

    For me, trusting the process meant accepting that I might never forgive my mother, and I may also forgive her if that’s what I need. I’ve let go of my anger and found some empathy for her, but I don’t love her, and I don’t want her in my life. Is that forgiveness? Maybe, maybe not.

    The more important question is: Do I need to forgive to let go of the past? For me, the answer is no. I’ve let go without forgiving. What do you need to let go of your past?

    Finding What Works for You

    Your healing journey is your own, and no one can tell you what you need to do. There is not one experience or method that works for everyone. Forgiveness might be part of your process—or it might not. What matters most is that you honor your needs, your boundaries, and your emotions. Letting go of the past isn’t about following someone else’s roadmap—it’s about creating your own.

  • Stop Telling Me to Forgive: Why This Isn’t Helpful

    Stop Telling Me to Forgive: Why This Isn’t Helpful

    “If you force yourself into forgiveness before fully feeling and moving through the layers of anger and hurt, it won’t be a clean and true forgiveness but rather a pseudo-virtuous form of bypassing and suppression.” ~Cory Muscara

    A while back, I was invited to a birthday party, and I was genuinely excited to go. But then I learned that someone I no longer associate with—a former best friend—would also be attending. The news stopped me in my tracks.

    This wasn’t just an “ex-friend.” She had once been one of the most important people in my life, but that changed when I went through a painful experience involving a narcissistic individual. When I needed her most, she didn’t stand by me. Instead, she stayed silent, offering no support as I endured gaslighting, invalidation, and manipulation.

    Letting go of the narcissist was clear and necessary, but recognizing that my best friend was no longer safe for me was much harder. It took more than a year of reflection, emotional processing, and painful physical symptoms for me to accept that this relationship was no longer healthy.

    So, I declined the party invitation, explaining to my friend that for my own well-being, I needed to skip the event. But instead of understanding, I received a lecture about forgiveness. “You need to hear the other side,” she said. “There are two sides to every story.”

    Her words stung. Not because forgiveness hadn’t crossed my mind, but because they dismissed the boundaries I had worked so hard to establish. Why is it that when we try to protect ourselves, others feel compelled to challenge our decisions?

    The Problem with Prescriptive Forgiveness

    In our culture, forgiveness is often upheld as the ultimate solution to pain. We see it in inspirational quotes and self-help advice:

    • “Forgiveness is a choice you make to move forward.”
    • “Not forgiving is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”
    • “Refusing to forgive keeps you chained to the past.”

    While these ideas sound wise, they often oversimplify the complex process of healing. Forgiveness is not always something you can will yourself into. For those who’ve experienced deep and profound trauma, the mind and body don’t always align. You can tell yourself to forgive, but your emotions and physical responses may resist.

    A More Compassionate Perspective

    For me, the turning point came when I discovered a different definition of forgiveness by Teal Swan:

    “When you’ve experienced profound trauma, the focus shouldn’t be on forgiveness but on healing by creating resolve and experiencing the opposite of the harm. As you heal and find love, safety, and protection elsewhere, forgiveness often arises naturally, as the disruption within you resolves on its own.”

    This shifted everything. It reminded me that forgiveness isn’t something you force; it’s something that flows naturally when healing has occurred. And healing often requires us to focus on what was missing during the hurtful experience.

    How to Support Someone Who’s Healing

    When a friend or loved one shares their pain, the best thing you can do is meet their needs in the moment, not prescribe forgiveness or reconciliation. Instead, offer actions that help counteract the harm they’ve endured:

    • If they feel unsafe, help them feel secure.
    • If they feel unheard, listen deeply.
    • If they feel betrayed, show them loyalty.
    • If they communicate a boundary, honor it.
    • If they feel dismissed, validate their emotions and experiences.
    • If they feel abandoned, stay consistent and present in their life.

    These actions create the foundation for healing, which makes forgiveness—if it comes—authentic and meaningful.

    Let’s Change the Conversation

    The next time someone shares their struggle, resist the urge to suggest forgiveness. Instead, focus on understanding their needs and providing genuine support. Healing doesn’t come from empty platitudes; it comes from connection, empathy, and actions that restore what was broken.

    Forgiveness isn’t a prerequisite for healing. It’s a byproduct of it. And when it happens naturally, it’s far more powerful than anything forced or prescribed.

  • Your Anger Knows You Deserve to Be Treated Well

    Your Anger Knows You Deserve to Be Treated Well

  • Easily Annoyed by Your Partner? A Relationship-Saving Approach

    Easily Annoyed by Your Partner? A Relationship-Saving Approach

    “You are not your feelings. You just experience them. Anger, sadness, hate, depression, fear. This is the rain you walk in. But you don’t become the rain. You know the rain will pass. You walk on. And you remember the soft glow of the sun that will come again.” ~Matt Haig

    Being a relationship-oriented person all my life, I’ve found it fascinating and frustrating how easy it is to feel annoyed with one’s spouse—the person we are supposed to feel most happy to be around.

    I used to feel quite annoyed with my husband on a nearly daily basis. But with a bit of effort, annoyance has now become only an occasional companion who I feel pretty much at peace with.

    But boy, it was no fun back in the day. Little things that probably wouldn’t bother others really rubbed me the wrong way: How he hums sometimes when he chews. The slightest aggravation in his tone when speaking to our sons. The way he’d ask me to move when he was putting the dishes away and I was chopping veggies for dinner.

    When I learned I was a highly sensitive person (HSP)—one of the 25% of people who have a genetic trait that leads to processing all stimuli, including emotions, more deeply than others—it put things in perspective. And it helped me begin learning how to go from feeling overwhelmed by annoyance to it being a very occasional and mostly mellow experience.

    HSPs have a stronger tendency to feel easily annoyed or irritated by our significant others, as our systems are sensitive, and we tend to notice every little thing about others—so even small imperfections can loom large and get irritatingly under our skin.

    But you don’t have to be highly sensitive to feel frequently annoyed in your intimate relationship! I know plenty of non-HSPs who are also often accompanied by that old annoyance monster.

    Whether you are an HSP or not (here are some positive clues that you may be!), annoyance and irritation are much more likely to crop up when you are already in a state of stress or overstimulation, which happens more quickly for HSPs than it does for others.

    The frantic pace of the holiday season a few years back brought this into sharp focus. And it wasn’t just me. Many friends and fellow HSPs around me expressed sentiments like “I’m so irritated lately,” “My husband is so annoying,” “He’s just driving me crazy,” and “I’m worried that I’m annoyed with my partner so often.”

    Several women even confessed that their annoyance had led them to question the foundation of their relationships, fearing that something was fundamentally wrong and that perhaps it meant they shouldn’t be with their spouse anymore.

    I heard this more often from the HSPs I know. This is because HSPs tend to be highly aware and conscientious, and so we recognize this tendency to be more irritable than others, and we worry about its impact on our relationships and ourselves.

    Although I never personally feel that worry anymore, I remember it well, and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. I had started to feel a resurgence of that annoyance toward my dear hubby during those holiday weeks. So I know how uncomfortable these feelings can be, and how hard they can be on our partner as well.

    Because when we feel annoyed, we act—dare I say it—annoying, or at least difficult. And that can be hard for everyone—kids, our partner, and others—to be around.

    So, let’s delve deeper into why we can be prone to annoyance in our intimate relationships, why HSPs are particularly susceptible to strong feelings of irritation, and how I successfully stopped letting these feelings damage my marriage—and how you can stop feeling so bad about your annoyed feelings and allowing them to be a problem in your relationship.

    Why Do We Get Easily Annoyed by Minor Issues?

    The human brain is more focused on things that go wrong (about two-thirds of the time) or things that are lacking than those that are going well (about one-third of the time). This is called the negativity bias of the brain, and it’s a survival thing: If it’s really zoned in on what’s wrong or missing, its primal logic goes, it will keep us alive longer! So it judges things as bad or wrong at the drop of a hat, always keeping a vigilant lookout for all that is not right. In more truly threatening situations, this tendency gives rise to such emotions as fear and anger.

    But in times of less actual threat, such as a hectic holiday season with loved ones, the emotions this part of our brain generates are less intense. Say hello to annoyance, aggravation, and irritation!

    Pair that with all the time we spend living and navigating choices and chores with one particular person who may do things differently than we would—our intimate partner—and we are bound to have lots of opportunities for annoyance to crop up regularly.

    And since HSPs experience all stimuli with greater intensity, for us, even the most subtle or minor irritants, which might not faze others, can become quite aggravating.

    That holiday season I mentioned was particularly hectic for me. Juggling three kids’ needs, running my own business, and managing a large extended family, I anticipated that these few weeks would test my patience. Therefore, when I found myself persistently irritated, it wasn’t unexpected.

    When I began to get aggravated by every small thing my husband did (such as retelling the same story over and over) or didn’t do (like failing—again!—to light the wood stove first thing in the morning as I’d requested regularly), I didn’t let myself spiral into despair about my marriage.

    Instead, here’s what I did to gracefully get myself through those days of annoyance.

    How to Handle Your Annoyance with Your Partner

    1. Own your feelings as your own.

    The first thing I did was to remind myself that my frustration wasn’t a result of my husband’s actions. I realized that he hadn’t changed or become any more bothersome than usual. He was just doing things as he usually does them. My feelings were entirely about what was happening within me.

    2. Acknowledge what your feelings feel like in your body.

    Next, instead of simply being in those feelings, I examined them, like a scientist might examine a cell through a microscope—with real curiosity—specifically, about what they felt like in my body. I noticed the heat they created, especially in my arms, and the almost prickly sensation in my head and chest.

    As I stayed with these sensations, I noticed they were not comfortable, but not really so bad, either. And that the feelings seemed to fade as I simply acknowledged and sat with them like a good friend. I learned that this was a great way to ease my annoyance and stop letting it erupt out of me at my husband.

    3. Delve into what is fueling these emotions.

    With continued curiosity, I examined what could be driving these feelings, again, knowing it had everything to do with me.

    I recognized that physical factors were contributing to my irritation: fluctuating hormones, stress, the endless gray skies, and the long, dark nights—all contributing to a sense of cabin fever.

    I also noticed that I was fixating on what was wrong, slipping into a critical mindset, rather than acknowledging what was going well. My thoughts were very fixated on the ways my husband wasn’t being who I wanted him to be or doing what I wanted him to do. They were quite engaged in a big old game of judge, judge, judge (hello, negativity bias)!

    Seeing this freed me up to deliberately shift my focus to the positive aspects of my partner and our current situation—of which there were plenty. This change in perspective helped ease my irritation a bit.

    4. Notice the stories your mind is weaving about what these feelings mean—and disbelieve them.

    Most of us, especially HSPs, take our thoughts about our feelings really seriously. As in, “If I feel irritated, something must be wrong with my husband, or with me, or with US!”

    How do you feel when you think like that? Likely worried. And pretty upset. I know I did when I used to buy into that kind of thinking.

    Although I no longer believed my thoughts about what this upsurge of annoyance “meant,” they still came up, such as:

    Could something be wrong with me and my ability to love? Does this annoyance mean I’ll never feel good with my husband again? Does it mean he’s an annoying person and I made a mistake marrying him?

    I knew those thoughts were normal, and I didn’t give them much stock. Truly, thinking such anxious thoughts and analyzing their implications through a fear-based lens is typical for the human mind—like a habit (especially, once again, for the sensitive human mind). It doesn’t mean they have any truth.

    I realized more than ever that these emotions, rather than being an indication of a problem in our relationship, were signaling that something was off for ME, about ME. In and of themselves, they mean nothing about my husband’s character, whether I love him or not, or how compatible we are.

    So, when any “meaning making” thoughts came up about my annoyance toward him, I’d just let them drift on by like passing clouds. I reminded myself I am human, and humans feel annoyed around other humans sometimes, no matter who the other person is. And it’s just no biggy.

    The ironic thing about this was, as the annoyance stopped feeling like a threat and I felt less stress around it, it actually stopped rearing its head so much.

    5. Look at what you’re doing to annoy yourself.

    My biggest realization was that I was the one annoying myself. Because I had not been supporting myself well during the chaos of the season.

    For highly sensitive people, a lifestyle full of genuine self-care and quiet moments is essential. Without it, we easily become overstimulated, which naturally leads to irritability. Actually, anyone who is overstimulated or stressed is easily irritated—and in our modern world, most of us are chronically stressed.

    By neglecting to schedule adequate downtime, skipping my walks, staying up later and later each night, and cramming every available minute with work to finish everything before my vacation, I had been putting myself in a chronically over-aroused state and therefore annoying myself.

    Often, the amount of annoyance we feel is in direct proportion to the amount of nervous system-regulating self-care that we practice. In other words, if you feel annoyed, try adding some self-care—specifically things that regulate your nervous system.

    So I did just that when I could make time for it during the holiday bustle. Once the festivities ended, I dedicated even more time to quiet and relaxation and got back to a much more peaceful place inside myself.

    The result of doing these five things?

    My annoyance was completely replaced by natural and strong feelings of affection and appreciation for my husband. I started feeling so much love for him and being more loving, so he, too, became more loving, and our time together became fun once again.

    That’s because it’s easy to love and enjoy someone who is so obviously loving and enjoying you.

    You can follow the same approach I did to alleviate the annoyance you might be experiencing.

    We all want to feel relaxed and content, truly enjoying the company of our chosen partner—and to feel that love reciprocated! Sometimes, it requires a bit more intentional effort to achieve this. It’s simply part of being a person, highly sensitive or not, navigating a hectic modern world.

  • 4 Fears That Create People-Pleasers and How to Ease Them

    4 Fears That Create People-Pleasers and How to Ease Them

    “It feels good to be accepted, loved, and approved of by others, but often the membership fee to belong to that club is far too high of a price to pay.” ~Dennis Merritt Jones

    Like a lot of people, I grew up putting others’ needs and wants first. I learned early that doing things for other people and accommodating their wishes gained me attention and approval. It was only in those moments that I felt good enough and deserving of love.

    As a child, I liked nothing more than feeling indispensable and being told I was a good and nice girl. This praise was incredibly important to me, as was making others happy. My own happiness did not come into the equation; I was happy because they were happy. I felt loved, safe, and appreciated, in the short term at least.

    As I got older, my people-pleasing went into overdrive. I continually tried to gain people’s approval, make them happy, and help them whenever needed.

    I hated to see loved ones hurt or upset and felt it was my responsibility to come to their rescue and ease their problems and pain. Before long, I became so hyper-aware of others’ feelings that I lost sight of where I ended and where other people began.

    For many years, I didn’t question why I felt I didn’t have the right to say no to people’s demands. I just assumed this was how my relationships were meant to be. By the time I was in my late teens, however, I often felt lost, drained, and empty.

    After a terrifying anxiety attack, I realized I’d been unhappy for years. Trying to please everyone had made me miserable and ill, and my relationships felt draining and one-sided.

    I took a long, hard look at myself and realized I’d become a people-pleaser not simply because I wanted to be a nice person or help others, but due to a specific emotion, an emotion I’d felt since early childhood: fear.

    I realized I’d given control over my life to other people out of fear. I’d let an emotion steal my life and well-being.

    When I examined my past behavior, it was obvious I’d been compelled to people-please due to a fear of certain situations stemming from my childhood. I believe these specific fears are the reason why many of us become people-pleasers.

    Fear of Rejection and Abandonment

    Inside every people-pleaser is a little child who never felt worthy of love and was afraid of being rejected and abandoned by his or her loved ones. Being good and nice and striving for approval is a way to try to suppress the fear.

    Children know instinctively that their survival depends on other people. As a child, I felt I had to be good all the time—one misdemeanor would be enough to make my loved ones reject me.

    That’s not to say my family didn’t love me; they absolutely did. But they were often emotionally distant, worried, stressed out, and very busy with other things. My strategy was to do my best to please them so I wouldn’t feel even more rejected than I already did.

    Many of us take this fear into our adult relationships too. People-pleasers usually believe they cannot disagree, not do as their loved ones want, or displease them in some way because their family or partner will stop loving them and leave. They don’t feel emotionally secure in their relationships.

    Yet how realistic is this belief? Would our loved ones really reject and abandon us if we displeased them? Is our position in their lives so uncertain and fragile that they would do this?

    People-pleasers tend to overestimate other people’s imagined negative reactions to what they do or say. They work hard to gain and keep love and friendship, but assume those ties are easily broken.

    Realistically, it’s highly unlikely your loved ones will reject you if you don’t do what they want. They might be disappointed or upset, but ultimately they’ll be able to cope with their expectations not being met. Regardless of their response, you aren’t responsible for their emotions or actions.

    When we know this, we can feel more secure about saying no to others. And that in turn helps them to respect our boundaries.

    Fear of Conflict and Anger

    People-pleasers try to avoid conflict and others’ anger at all costs and will do anything to defuse a confrontation or argument. This usually means backing down or not disagreeing, even if the other person is in the wrong. It means saying yes when we really want to say no.

    When you fear upsetting someone and causing an argument, you don’t speak up about what’s bothering or hurting you, and you don’t reveal your true feelings. You do all you can to keep the peace, believing mistakenly that conflict of any kind is bad for relationships.

    The truth is, our peacekeeping behavior builds a barrier to intimacy. It stops our relationships from growing and maturing. As a child I feared doing something wrong and being told off and punished, and as I got older I often felt lonely in many of my relationships. I also found trying to keep the peace exhausting.

    The harmony I worked so hard to maintain was nothing more than a false harmony; there was often an undercurrent of anxiety and frustration.

    Healthy relationships aren’t without disagreements because conflict and problems are inevitable in life. But the difference is that good, balanced relationships are able to handle conflict and problems constructively and use them as a way to deepen learning and understanding.

    As a people-pleaser, I wanted to find instant solutions to problems in order to minimize any potential conflict, regain harmony, and soothe any negative feelings. I rarely took my time to find an effective solution, and as a result, the problems were never fully resolved.

    I was also afraid of my own anger and repressed it or directed it at myself, and this no doubt contributed to my anxiety disorder. I mistakenly believed nice people didn’t get angry, not realizing that we cannot change our behavior for the better or improve our well-being unless we feel and recognize all our emotions.

    Fear of Criticism and Being Disliked

    No one likes to be criticized or disliked, especially a people-pleaser. We hold in high regard other people’s good opinions of us. We crave approval and think that accommodating everyone else will somehow protect us, but that’s rarely the case.

    I used to feel a sense of betrayal whenever someone criticized me. Didn’t they know how hard I tried to please them? How hard I tried to be good and nice all the time? Their criticism was like an arrow in the heart.

    When we fear others’ lack of approval and acceptance, we rarely show them who we really are and often live a life that does not feel authentic. We hide ourselves behind a mask of niceness and find it near impossible to separate our self-worth from our actions.

    Fearing others’ bad opinions of you makes you feel you cannot show you are fallible and flawed—basically, a normal human being.

    People-pleasers judge themselves very harshly and often set themselves unrealistic expectations. They feel they need to be perfect in order to be accepted or loved. They feel they cannot make mistakes or risk upsetting or disappointing people.

    If you don’t voice your opinions or needs, people will assume you’re happy to go along with what they want. They’ll also assume you’ll accept disrespectful behavior. Like many people-pleasers, I became an easy target for others’ dissatisfaction and nastiness.

    When we hand so much control over to other people, their criticism can be devastating, but this is only because we vastly overestimate the importance of what they think.

    In time, I realized that someone’s opinion of me is none of my business, and it’s impossible to control their thoughts about me, no matter what I do. It seemed crazy to let their opinions dictate how I lived my life because the only person I needed to seek approval from was myself.

    Fear of Losing Control and Not Being Needed

    People-pleasers need to be needed. It’s their automatic response to help others and try to make others happy, and they very often take other people’s actions, behavior, and emotions personally, believing they’re responsible for making others feel better.

    I grew up in an environment that was often anxious. Many of my loved ones did not handle their anxiety very well, due to their own upbringing. I became a confidante at a young age, before I had the maturity to handle certain problems or others’ anxiety. It was simply too burdensome for my young shoulders, but it didn’t stop me from trying to make things better.

    Because my sense of self was closely tied to how other people felt, I couldn’t bear to see loved ones hurting, and so I tried my hardest to ease any upset. Each time I succeeded, I felt needed and in control, but when I failed, I felt like I had let everyone down.

    I would become anxious if I couldn’t soothe or help someone else. I readily soaked up their negative emotions because I’d become so attuned to how they felt, placing their emotional well-being before my own. Because people-pleasers believe it’s their job to make others happy, they feel they need to control others’ anxiety and pain.

    But it’s not our role to make others happy or their lives problem-free; that’s their job. The sky won’t fall in if you cannot help someone. You can still be there for the people you love and empathize with them, but you don’t need to rush in and rescue them or lose yourself in their business. You don’t have to make their problems your own; you can instead trust them to solve their own issues.

    When I stopped hyper-focusing on other people, I saw that the only thing I needed to control was my half of my relationships. There’s no need to try to control others’ reactions because I’m not responsible for their thoughts or emotions.

    Many of our interactions with people don’t need to have the sort of emotional judgments people-pleasers attach to them. It’s okay to say no and not feel guilty. You aren’t betraying someone if you don’t do what they want or disagree with them. Just because someone doesn’t like you doesn’t mean you’re unlikeable. Just because you sometimes want to focus on yourself, it doesn’t mean you’re selfish.

    You gain this self-empowerment by easing the fear that’s caused your people-pleasing. While much of the fear comes from your childhood, as an adult you now have control over changing aspects of your behavior that don’t serve you.

    This doesn’t involve any self-blame, nor is it about blaming our loved ones. We’re all the products of our upbringing, and we all have scars. Most people try to do the best they can with what they have and know. By changing our behavior, we can often encourage positive change in others too.

    People-pleasing is always linked to self-worth. When you create a strong sense of self, you realize that you aren’t your past, your thoughts, or your emotions. You know your self-worth isn’t linked to another person.

    How to Ease the Fear

    Instead of looking for validation from other people and the outside world, we need to search inward. In order to ease our fear, it’s important to face it, no matter how painful it feels. Understanding our fear helps us to move forward.

    Because our people-pleasing and our fears usually stem from childhood, we need to revisit our child selves. Try this exercise:

    Find somewhere quiet to sit and relax. Close your eyes and take slow, deep, even breaths, and imagine in your mind a time when you felt rejected as a child. Replay the events as you remember them and feel the feelings you experienced at that time.

    Then imagine your present self holding your child self’s hand as they go through that moment of feeling rejected. Tell your child self how much you love them and care for them, and that there’s nothing to fear. Each time your younger self feels afraid or rejected, soothe them and let them know they’re in a safe place.

    Think about what you’d like to say to your child self and what advice you’d like to give them, knowing what you know now. You are now able to protect, support, and encourage your child self. Think about how you want to feel and be treated rather than focus on any negativity.

    When I did this exercise, I told my child self that she was worthy, valuable, and precious. I advised her that what she wanted and needed was valid and important, and she had the right to speak up and say no.

    I told her she would never be rejected because she had my unconditional love and support, and she didn’t need to strive for love from anyone because she was already lovable. I encouraged her to think about her dreams and goals and not stifle them because of others’ opinions. Most of all, I kept repeating that I loved her.

    When you feel ready to end the exercise, bring yourself back to the present moment and think about what the exercise has taught you. Do you understand your child self more and your reasons for people-pleasing? Do you think about those past events in a different way?

    You can do the exercise as many times as you wish. It gives you the time to focus on how you feel about past experiences, and as a result, it also helps you come to terms with what happened and to heal.

    When I stopped basing my identity on my relationships and the past, I stopped hiding myself behind people-pleasing behavior. I started to set boundaries, and as my self-love, self-acceptance, and self-respect grew, my relationships improved too. People soon adapted to my new behavior because I showed them how I wanted to be treated—with respect and consideration.

    Self-love is essential. It isn’t selfish to think about what you want and need. It isn’t selfish to make decisions about your life based on what you want and need rather than to merely please others.

    You owe it to yourself to put your people-pleasing ways behind you. You owe it to yourself to take care of yourself first, because that is the only real way you can truly help other people.

  • Share Your Truth: 4 Reasons to Stand Up for Yourself

    Share Your Truth: 4 Reasons to Stand Up for Yourself

    “If you want to live an authentic, meaningful life, you need to master the art of disappointing and upsetting others, hurting feelings, and living with the reality that some people just won’t like you. It may not be easy, but it’s essential if you want your life to reflect your deepest desires, values, and needs.” ~Cheryl Richardson

    Last week, I was at the studio where I teach, and one of the teachers was running late. Her students began arriving, so I came out of the office where I was working and started welcoming them, directing them into the room for practice.

    She came rushing, quickly stopped by the office, peeked in, and said, “I hope I am not stressing you out when I arrive late like this and you are accommodating people who came before me.”

    I smiled and said that it wasn’t a problem and that I had directed them into the room for practice. She said okay and disappeared, mingling and welcoming the students.

    And that was the moment when I betrayed myself.

    Why?

    Because inside, I wasn’t okay with her being late. I wasn’t okay with being interrupted while working. I wasn’t okay with the fact that she didn’t bother letting me know she was running late.

    But instead of being honest while kindly asking her to come in earlier or communicating with me if she was running late in the future, I chose the road of least resistance. I traded what I authentically felt for the comfort of fakeness. And it hurt.

    In the past, I would try to mask my frustration with thoughts like, “Come on, you can do this for her. What’s your problem? Stop making a big deal out of nothing. Just let it go.”

    But the truth was, I often didn’t let things go. Since I denied and ridiculed what I felt, my inner resentment and anger toward myself began to grow. Of course, I would direct it toward others, silently blaming them for their behavior while playing the victim card.

    When she and all the students went into the room, I was left in silence with my thoughts. Since I was aware of what I’d just done, I knew that I had to fix it. I knew that if I didn’t speak up, I would always choose the path of least resistance while remaining silent around things that I don’t like, don’t align with, or simply am not okay with.

    Therefore, I decided to communicate my thoughts with her and be honest about how I felt.

    After the session ended, I waited while everyone left and called her into the office. As I heard her approaching, I felt a pit in my stomach while finding it hard to swallow. She popped her head in and asked, “What’s up?”

    I went on to say, “I think you could come a few minutes earlier next time or at least text me if you are running late.”

    She immediately apologized and said she was sorry about it and that she wasn’t trying to take advantage of my being there.

    I continued further.

    “You know, I wasn’t honest when I said it’s okay. I was being nice, but I was fake, and I am working on not doing that anymore.”

    Ironically, at the end of our conversation, I felt even closer to her. We talked for another thirty minutes, sharing what was happening in our coaching businesses and listening to each other’s challenges while bouncing ideas off each other.

    Although we won’t get a positive result every time we speak our truth, I’ve learned there are four compelling reasons to stand up for ourselves.

    1. It builds self-respect. 

    I think we’ve all wondered at least once in our lives, “How can I love myself, and what does that even mean?”

    I’ve learned that the path to self-love is through self-respect. When we do things that honor our well-being, our relationship with ourselves will naturally improve.

    In his book The 5 Love Languages, Gary Chapman says that love is action. Although he applies this concept to relationships with others, doesn’t the same idea apply to our relationships with ourselves?

    We don’t build self-respect by thinking about how we should act, but by taking actions that show self-respect. And this often comes with some level of discomfort since we are shedding off our old people-pleasing tendencies or fear of rejection and judgment.

    Since we are not familiar with this new persona, we may take one step forward and then two steps back. But if we are willing to go through these growing pains, we’ll be well on our way to building healthy relationships while honoring our mental and emotional health.

    2. It makes us less resentful and angry. 

    When I lied to a teacher in the studio and pretended that I was okay with her being late, I felt a surge of anger and upset flooding my body. Although this feeling was quite subtle, I realized that every time I betrayed myself like this, it was there. I just chose to ignore it.

    Since I didn’t want to deal with the discomfort of having a conversation and standing up for myself, I denied it. This created a series of suppressed emotions over time.

    The truth is, we often know when we are betraying ourselves. If we stop for a moment when these situations happen and look at what we are truly feeling, we’ll see that we aren’t okay with half of the things we agree to.

    Maybe we do it out of fear of being judged or abandoned, or because we want to please others. Either way, the repercussions of self-betrayal are long-lasting.

    But when we find the courage to speak up, to have uncomfortable conversations, and to stand up for ourselves, we begin breaking the cycle of past conditioning and trauma and start rebuilding relationships with ourselves.

    Although I felt a pit in my stomach and difficulty swallowing my saliva before sharing my truth, I felt a sense of ease and respect toward myself because I knew I was standing up for myself. I wasn’t in denial (as I often was before), lying, or pretending; I was true to myself. The initial resentment and upset I felt when I faked my response were gone, and a huge relief washed over me.

    3. It heals the part of us that seeks approval and validation. 

    A while back, I had a session with a client, and we talked about her standing up for herself when interacting with her mother. She was so used to pleasing and agreeing that she didn’t even know who she was or what she wanted in life. This parent/child dynamic was getting to her, and she felt she couldn’t pretend anymore.

    During one of our sessions, she ironically asked, “Isn’t it just easier to keep things the way they are?”

    She was referring to pleasing her mother instead of having hard conversations with her and, rather, making up stories about why she couldn’t come over or didn’t pick up the phone.

    Keeping things as they are may bring immediate relief because we don’t have to feel the icky feeling of speaking our truth. But eventually, the resentment and anger build up and manifest either in angry outbursts or, worse, mental, emotional, and physical illness.

    When we start speaking up and setting boundaries, we begin healing the part of us that constantly seeks approval and validation. We trade the fear of not being included for deep inner healing and blissful growth.

    4. It helps us protect our relationships if we communicate clearly and kindly. 

    In the past, I feared that when I spoke up for myself or set a boundary, I would hurt people. Since I was angry and resentful because of the lack of boundaries, I couldn’t imagine kindness and directness in one conversation. Over time, I learned that setting boundaries isn’t about kicking people out but about keeping them in my life.

    Therefore, I always make sure when I’m having these conversations that I am rested, in the right frame of mind, and very conscious of my words. Especially when I communicate my boundaries to someone for the first time, I always remind myself that whatever I allowed was on me.

    Most of the time, a person isn’t aware of the emotions I masked with my silence and often receives what I say quite well. However, one of my friendships ended because I spoke my truth. This is something we can’t predict.

    I also learned that the saying “no is a complete sentence” isn’t always the most suitable approach. It all depends on the situation and the dynamic of the relationship I am handling. Saying no to a stranger in a grocery store is a complete sentence, while communication with one of my closest friends requires a little more if I care to deepen our relationship instead of leaving them puzzled with a sudden change in my behavior.

    —

    Overall, I understand how unhealthy denying our truth is. Although I feel some fear around speaking my truth every time I do it, I’ve noticed that the inner resentment that sets in when remaining silent isn’t worth the validation and approval I sometimes seek.

    Therefore, I’ve decided to make a commitment to myself. When I notice that I want to take the route of least resistance, I pause, take a deep breath, and tell myself this simple affirmation: “My healing is non-negotiable.”

  • Nobody Talks About the Angry Stage of Healing

    Nobody Talks About the Angry Stage of Healing

  • 3 Important Things to Remember When People Are Mean

    3 Important Things to Remember When People Are Mean

    “Be kind. Be thoughtful. Be genuine. But most of all, be thankful.” ~Unknown

    Nobody is spared from being on the receiving end of a mean comment at some point or another. And it’s been said time and time again that allowing a mean person to get under your skin only serves to let them control you. The wiser thing to do is recognize that their comment about you is uninformed and get on with your day.

    Still, it’s far easier to know that wisdom than it is to truly feel and live it.

    I remember one instance in particular: A coworker (who I had never been fond of) had recently returned from an extended leave and was seeing me for the first time in several months. Upon encountering me in the hallway, she looked me up and down and said, “You’ve… been eating well.”

    I was so stung that I couldn’t respond. I wanted to respond defensively. Later, I wished I had responded rudely. Every time I thought about it, a new wave of sassy retorts I should have made populated my brain, and I found my jaw tensing and my fists clenching. I even wondered if it was too late to complain to HR. How dare she say something so rude and unprofessional to me?

    I was fully aware that weight is an emotionally fraught subject in my world, as it is for many people. My weight often fluctuated dramatically based on the other circumstances of my life, and I had been through the gamut of not-so-healthy dieting and short-lived attempts at fitness that many of us know all too well.

    Therefore, I was also fully aware that her comment only stung so hard because of my personal journey with weight; that she didn’t know about that journey; that she may belong to a culture or community in which “eating well” is not necessarily offensive; and that if she had judged me on some other aspect, I very possibly could have rolled my eyes and banked this as additional confirmation that yes, she is someone I don’t like.

    I was aware of all this, and yet my blood still boiled at the very thought of her.

    I decided that because this wasn’t the first time a mean comment had had this great of an effect on me, and it wouldn’t be the last, maybe I could compile some mental pointers to help me through these moments, if only for my own sanity. Here is what I came up with:

    1. Never do anything when your blood is boiling.

    Though I was speechless at first, the urge to make a mean comment back at her (if even a few days later) was all-consuming and felt perfectly justified. After all, I’m only human. Yet I’m ultimately glad I kept my cool.

    First off, being mean can majorly backfire—what if she had complained to our supervisor or decided to make my work environment unbearable in retaliation? And secondly, if I decided to reverse our roles, I would appear no better than her—the very person whose actions I scorned.

    But more importantly, I know that while emotions are important and deserve to be honored to their fullest extent, in the heat of the moment, they don’t represent our true nature and are not reliable signals. Instead, they are best expressed when paired with wisdom, which can often only be gleaned with some distance and pause.

    When I gave myself that pause and thought about it, I realized I don’t really want to be the kind of person who combats meanness by going even lower—I know I don’t believe in that. And I also don’t believe in digging deeper holes by starting an unprofessional feud.

    What I do believe is that my outer actions should align with my inner values. This means honoring my emotions with fairness and self-compassion while still maintaining external grace.

    This is really hard—it requires a lot of practice and patience.

    To start, I could process my experience of being hurt through a framework of self-love rather than a framework of spite. This could mean discussing my hurt feelings with a friend or mentor, writing about them, releasing the tension through physical activity or breathwork, or even reminding myself of all my positive qualities and assets that have the power to render one unimportant criticism negligible.

    2. Being civil doesn’t mean I have to like everyone.

    I didn’t want my silence to indicate that I was okay with, or passive to, being treated rudely. But in the professional space, where my focus is supposed to be on getting work done, civility enabled me to meet my goals and contribute to a well-functioning team. There was no reason why my relationship with this coworker had to take on any further form.

    Being civil did not translate to spending more time with her than required, engaging in conversation unrelated to work, inquiring about her life and sharing details about mine, talking to her at staff events, out of the office, or even in the parking lot; those are things I have the freedom to do with people I like. I appreciate the people in my life who bring me personal satisfaction and make me feel valuable, and I recognize that it’s a gift to find and spend time with these people.

    On the flip side, it is totally normal and possible to coexist with people who don’t make us feel fantastic and who we don’t choose to engage with, while still maintaining polite conduct for the sake of the task, event, or other item du jour.

    If a coworker’s behavior crossed into bullying or harassment, I know of formal steps I could take to advocate for myself. However, there is significant gray territory that is often inhabited by the people we simply don’t like—people whose actions we don’t appreciate, who we wouldn’t willingly group ourselves with.

    I gained a lot of relief when I understood that I have the skill and self-control to work on a professional task with someone in this category, but at the same time, I am under no obligation to welcome their presence and energy into other parts of my life.

    It was liberating and empowering to realize that treating everyone with basic civility is the wiser choice, only up until a certain point, and after that point, I have control over who I bring into closer orbit and how.

    3. You learn as much from the people you don’t want to be like as you do from the people you do want to be like.

    It’s joyful to look back and remember an inspirational teacher, friend, coach, or even a kind stranger who touched us with their positive qualities and thus impacted our personal trajectory. On the contrary, it’s painful to look back and remember people who were mean, inconsiderate, cruel, or any one of the innumerable undesirable qualities we inevitably come across. However, those people inevitably impacted our personal trajectory in much the same way.

    A great teacher of mine once said that gratitude does not mean that you are okay with everything; rather, it means that you are grateful for everything you’ve been taught. In other words, we can be grateful for each seemingly negative experience because it helped us confirm that we want something different.

    I see the potential for gratitude toward everybody who brings me into awareness of how I want to live and how I want to treat others, and that list includes coworkers making unprofessional digs.

    Nobody is perfect; just like nobody is spared from receiving a mean comment, at other times, nobody is spared from accidentally (or intentionally) making one.

    So, the next time it entered my mind to make a not-so-kind or not-so-necessary comment, I could remember what I learned from this experience and reconsider my actions.

    This reconsideration and ability to take a different course would be a tiny step toward cultivating the kinder, more considerate world that I want. And for that ability, I owe gratitude to my coworker and to everyone else who made me feel hurt or stung. They have brought me to the awareness that I desire a different action.

    Our interactions with others are unpredictable, and we never know when somebody is going to catch us off guard with a comment or action that stings or angers us. As a result, developing the ability to recognize, ingrain, and respond with some of the ideas I outlined, rather than with our initial experience of shock and raw emotion, is an arduous and, at times, unsatisfying process.

    But this dissatisfaction is often limited to the short term and fades when we do the hard work toward processing emotions. In the long term, doing the harder thing usually aligns with the more satisfying course of action and also aligns with our deeper values and beliefs on how life should be lived.

  • What Forgiveness Really Means and Why It’s the Ultimate Freedom

    What Forgiveness Really Means and Why It’s the Ultimate Freedom

    I used to loathe the word “forgiveness.”

    What it meant to me was that someone could hurt me, lie to me, or even abuse me, say “sorry,” and I was supposed to pretend like nothing happened. If I didn’t, they would say to me, “I thought you were a forgiving person,” or “What? I already said I was sorry.”

    It felt awful, outside and inside.

    I had one relationship that I knew very well wasn’t good for me and I wanted out of, but my misunderstanding of what the word “forgiveness” meant kept me stuck there for a very long time.

    The person would lie repeatedly and never come clean. When things came out (as they often do), the person would claim to be sorry or that they were “getting better” and then expect me to just go on as if nothing had happened.

    My trust for them was eroded, and by staying there, that spilled over into my trust for other people and even myself. My self-worth also became depleted. I felt powerless because I believed that, in order to be a good, forgiving person, I had to accept as many meaningless “sorries” as this person was going to dribble out. I lost motivation and became depressed and drained.

    It felt like forgiving was designed to punish the person who was hurt.

    I had heard the phrases “forgiveness sets you free,” and “forgiveness is for you, not them,” and neither made any sense because I certainly did not feel free, and there appeared to be nothing in it for me to keep allowing their nonsense.

    Well, it didn’t make sense because “forgiveness” wasn’t what I believed it was at all.

    One day, I looked it up in the dictionary.

    Forgiveness definition: “to let go of anger and resentment towards a person or event from the past.”

    Forgiveness is that—just that. Ceasing to carry around resentment or anger inside of yourself for what happened in the past.

    It doesn’t say you’re supposed to pretend it never happened.

    It doesn’t say you’re supposed to trust the person again after they broke your trust, just because you have forgiven them.

    It doesn’t even say you have to speak to them again.

    Ever.

    Forgiveness IS for you.

    Forgiveness DOES set you free.

    Forgiveness means you stop carrying around the pain of the past inside of you. So that you don’t bring it into every new place you go, allowing it to bubble up and explode on people who had nothing to do with causing you injury.

    If you decide to forgive a person but not speak to them again because you know you can’t trust them, that’s 100% wise to do and doesn’t mean you’re unforgiving. It means your trust was broken, and they gave you no reason to think it would not be broken again, so you decided to separate. Or maybe they made promises and broke them again and again until your trust for them was entirely demolished.

    Forgiveness doesn’t have to mean reconciliation.

    Forgiveness means you accept that what happened has happened and can’t be changed. It means if a memory pops up or gets triggered, you’re not fired up by that anger and resentment and completely disempowered in that moment as if you were still living in the past.

    It isn’t instant, nor easy, and there is a process to it that involves acceptance, reflection, wisdom, and presence before the release. It takes time. It takes work. Memories can catch you off guard, but once you are aware of what is happening, you can use the process on them and dissolve them as they come.

    Knowing what forgiveness is—real actual forgiveness—and applying it to my life has been absolutely life-changing.

    I no longer poison present days with past pain. I can hear a song that reminds me of a painful time in the past and not get set off at all. I didn’t forget what happened, but it no longer has power over me.

    This is the gift of forgiveness. It’s not for them, about them, or dependent on them. It is for you, about you, takes place within you, and gives you your life back. It gives you and all those who you choose to have in your life now the best version of you, unencumbered by haunting memories.

    You don’t forget, you don’t erase, you heal.

  • 4 Things You Need to Know About Your Hurting Inner Child

    4 Things You Need to Know About Your Hurting Inner Child

    “She held herself until the sobs of the child inside subsided entirely. I love you, she told herself. It will all be okay.” ~H. Raven Rose

    The first time I heard about inner child work was in a random article I found on the internet.

    It caught my attention because I was struggling to develop loving and compassionate feelings toward myself. Although I understood the role of limiting beliefs and unhealthy habits in my healing process and how to overcome them, I couldn’t feel love and empathy for myself.

    Most of the time, I was either very harsh toward myself for any minor mistake or denied feelings that came up.

    For example, as a teenager and a young adult, I struggled with anger. As I got older, I realized that emotional outbursts aren’t healthy, so I began to mask my anger with passive aggressiveness. However, the shame around anger remained because there were times when I still felt strong and intense anger. I just got better at hiding it. Or so I thought.

    I felt anger quite often, and I couldn’t stand it. I got angry with myself for being angry.

    The same denial and frustration applied to other emotions that made me feel vulnerable, like shame, guilt, or judgment.

    Because of the work I was doing with women, I thought I should be somewhere else, focusing on blooming flowers and appreciating the sunshine. In the meantime, I didn’t feel like I was walking my talk. And that, with no surprise, brought more shame and anger.

    Then, one day, my fridge broke down.

    I began to deal with the issue, trying to schedule maintenance. As I was driving to meet with a client, I received an email regarding appointment times that wouldn’t work for me, and there wasn’t a lot of flexibility in rescheduling.

    Suddenly, I felt an intense upsurge of anger and frustration flooding my body. Although I was able to witness it without reacting, it alarmed me since I hadn’t felt this way in a long time. Tears started to run down my cheeks.

    I felt defeated while asking myself,  “Why am I feeling this way? Why are these emotions still here? When is it going to stop?”

    As I was trying to wipe my tears while navigating rush-hour traffic, a thought came to mind: “It’s okay to feel angry.”

    I placed my hand on my chest, briefly closed my eyes as I was waiting at a red light, and whispered, “I see you” (referring to my inner child, recognizing her acting up by being angry).

    Soon after, something unexpected happened.

    I opened my eyes and felt a profound sense of lightness. The anger had left my body.

    I was in awe. More tears began rolling down my face, but this time from gratitude for the acceptance and grace I was able to give to myself.

    I realized that the whole time I was suppressing my anger, the inner version of me was asking for acceptance. She wanted to be seen and acknowledged, without judgment. It felt as if my inner child had been trying to get my attention and show me something (as kids do), but I kept pushing her away while being busy with other stuff.

    The moment I turned to her and gave her the attention she needed, she settled down.

    After this profound experience, I began to dive deeper into this healing modality and understood four things about the inner child in all of us.

    1. Our inner child wants to be seen.

    When we are acting on our triggers and behaving in ways that we know are not healthy for us, it means that our inner child is acting up. I always visualize a scene of a little girl or boy pulling their mom’s sleeve, trying to show her something. It’s like they are saying, “Mom, look. Mom, pay attention to me. There is something important I want to show you.”

    When emotions we don’t like come up, or we act in the same old ways that bring judgment, our inner child is simply trying to get our attention. He or she wants to be seen, recognized, and acknowledged.

    One of the questions I ask my inner child when she is (I am) acting up is, “What are you trying to tell me?” When I do it with my eyes closed, the answer is almost instant.

    2. Our inner child wants to be validated.

    Most of us have had experiences when we got hurt but didn’t receive an apology.

    We’ve also had experiences when the person who hurt us apologized with sincerity. I’m guessing that at least half of our healing took place at that very moment. Instead of being ridiculed or dismissed, we were validated.

    The same applies to our inner children. As I previously described, only when I justified my little girl’s emotions instead of dismissing her did I experience emotional release and healing.

    Since inner child work is about reparenting ourselves, this is how we can understand it. I look at my subconscious mind as my inner child. That’s where all my beliefs, perceptions, and triggers are stored. My conscious mind is my parent. This part of me is logical, able to question my limiting beliefs and actively acknowledge and heal the wounds that are there.

    The beauty of inner child work is that we don’t need apologies from those who we feel wronged us.

    Since we are in the position of a parent and a child, we can give our inner child anything s/he needs.

    3. Our inner child is missing and seeking love.

    Love is the most resilient emotion. It gives us courage, strength, determination, gratitude, and acceptance, and it is often the emotion that our inner child craves the most.

    After we acknowledge and validate our inner child, we can soothe them with loving affirmations and words of encouragement.

    Here is a simple exercise I learned from a guided meditation.

    Close your eyes and take three deep, cleansing breaths. Bring into your vision a simple bench where you and your inner child are sitting together. First, ask your inner child if you can hold his or her hand. Once you receive permission, gently stroke your child’s hand and say the ancient Hawaiian Ho’oponopono mantra three times.

    I am sorry.

    Please forgive me.

    I love you.

    Thank you.

    When I practice this mantra, I use the first affirmation, “I am sorry,” to apologize to my inner child for any pain and hurt I caused her by not paying attention to her when she needed me. Then, I ask her to forgive me for denying her presence and the healing she was so desperately asking for.

    These first two mantras are deeply healing because once I forgive myself for betraying myself and my inner child, I feel instant relief and more drive to keep going. I am not paralyzed by subtle guilt anymore.

    In the end, I reassure her that I am here for her by saying that I love her and then thank her for giving me this opportunity to heal both of us.

    4. Our inner child is a gateway to heartfelt emotions.

    Often, when I see a child, there is a level of softness that enters my body. I attribute it to the innocence and sweetness children represent.

    Imagine yourself being upset, and suddenly a three-year-old comes in front of you and starts smiling. Whether you want it or not, it will affect you to some extent, and you may even smile back.

    We can embrace the same dynamic with our inner child and use it as a way to feel heartfelt emotions. One of those ways is to use the visualization exercise I shared with you earlier.

    The more we practice feeling love, compassion, and empathy toward our little selves, the more accustomed we become to feeling these emotions.

    Although guilt, judgment, shame, or anger may still arise, instead of judging or denying them, we can use compassion and curiosity to understand what these emotions are trying to tell us.

    By validating and accepting what we feel, we can reparent ourselves, heal our wounds, and start living from the most powerful place there is—the place of love.

  • You Can Be a Positive Example

    You Can Be a Positive Example

  • How to Let Go of the Past and Forgive

    How to Let Go of the Past and Forgive

    “Forgive others not because they deserve forgiveness, but because you deserve peace.” ~Jonathan Lockwood Huie

    As a child, I faced constant physical and mental abuse.

    Several classmates would beat me up in the schoolyard, hitting and kicking me. They also chased me down the streets to my home when school was done for the day. I had to cycle at my fastest to avoid another beating. It felt like I had to go through a war zone every day.

    Besides the physical abuse, these children also constantly criticized and ridiculed every single thing I did. This made me feel incredibly insecure about a lot of things, including the way I walked and talked.

    In short, they did everything in their power to make my life as miserable as possible. They succeeded: I became an incredibly unhappy and anxious child. I came back home crying countless times.

    Despite efforts by teachers and my parents to help, all of this lasted for five long years.

    It only ended because we all went to different high schools and classes after finishing primary school, not because they ever showed remorse. Still, I managed to let go of what happened and even forgive them. In fact, I have flourished and live a happy and fulfilling life nowadays. Here’s how I achieved this.

    First, Forgive Yourself

    We are often our own worst enemy. Instead of showing empathy and compassion to ourselves, we tend to be overly critical. When I was being bullied, I blamed myself. I thought if they were targeting me, there must have been something wrong with me, which meant I had to change myself to prevent further bullying.

    Now, I know that isn’t true, and there is simply no excuse to bully anyone. The responsibility for their actions lies with the kids who hurt me, not with me.

    At that time, I was simply being my authentic self, and that’s a great thing, not a reason to bully myself.

    You’re likely being harder on yourself than on others. So, to counter this, imagine one of your friends faced the exact same thing you’re facing. How would you respond to that friend?

    You’d probably show support and be kind to them. Now say those kind words to yourself. You deserve empathy and compassion just as much as your friends do.

    “Nothing can harm you as much as your own thoughts unguarded.” ~The Buddha

    Realize That Those Who Did It Are Gone

    One of my favorite stories about the Buddha is about a man who spat on his face and insulted him. After the Buddha did not lash out at the man, but instead remained calm and kind, the man returned home confused. The next day, he returned to the Buddha. He hadn’t slept all night, haunted by his own behavior and the unexpected reaction from the Buddha. He begged the Buddha for forgiveness.

    Instead, the Buddha explained to him that there was nothing to forgive. The person the Buddha was talking to was not the same person who spat on his face the day before; the man had changed during the night because of his repentance, and the man who spat was no more.

    In the same vein, I believe that after all that time, the people who made me suffer as a child have changed. They were children at the time, but have now grown up to be adults. I have changed so much between then and now, and so have they. Those children who did this to me are no longer here. So is there really someone to forgive anymore?

    I imagine this mindset is harder to adopt if you feel the person who hurt you hasn’t changed. In that case, it might help to remember that people who bully or abuse are often in great pain themselves (which is often why they bully or abuse). This doesn’t condone their mistreatment in any way, but it might make it easier to release your anger toward them.

    Take Back Control

    Another way that I let go and forgave is by taking back control. If you let bad experiences in the past guide your present and future, then you give control to those experiences and the people who caused them.

    I’d highly recommend switching your perspective: Yes, those terrible experiences happened, but if you let them define who you are now and who you will be, then don’t you suffer twice? Once in the past, and again in the present.

    Instead, you could take back control of your present and future by letting who you are right now guide your actions. I find it empowering to take control of my life and create my own path.

    One way to do this is by crafting your own identity. Instead of identifying myself as a victim, I view myself as a victor. Someone who endured hardship and only got stronger through that suffering. By creating my own helpful identity, I take back control.

    Appreciate the Gains

    Another shift of perspective is by looking at how the experiences have positively shaped you instead of focusing on the suffering. Of course, there are situations where nothing has been gained, but in my case, there were certainly gains.

    For example, the abuse made me tough. Nowadays, I’m not easily impressed by problems, knowing I have faced much worse and came out on top. It has also made me more empathic, having lived through a lot of suffering myself. And my suffering brought me to Buddhism, where I learned about the nature of suffering and the path to end it.

    What have you gained from your hardships?

    Focus on the Present

    The past is dead. It can’t be changed, and it’s no longer here. So why keep thinking about the past when there is the present where you can actually do something and change your life for the better? After all, it’s only in the present that you can act.

    A healthier approach toward the past is to look for lessons you can learn. If you approach the past that way, it can have a positive impact on your present and future. For example, I learned that it’s of great importance to stand up for yourself. That’s a lesson I take to heart and apply almost daily.

    Another way you can focus more on the present is by practicing mindfulness and meditation.

    “Anxiety, the illness of our time, comes primarily from our inability to dwell in the present moment.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    Let It All Out

    It’s completely normal to have intense emotions about bad experiences in the past. So don’t hide from those emotions but let them out instead. There are many ways to do this, like writing in a journal or drawing or making music. Pick the method that suits you best.

    By letting your emotions out, you better understand what you’re feeling and why you have those emotions. This creates an opportunity to find peace within yourself.

    Find Support

    Sometimes you can’t let go and forgive on your own. In that case, it can be of great value to find someone you trust and who can support you. This can be a friend, family member, counselor, or anyone willing to help you get through your hardship.

    In my case, I found a lot of support from my mother and best friend. They helped me process my feelings and gave me a new perspective when I was struggling.

    “Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything—anger, anxiety, or possessions—we cannot be free.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh 

    These are the steps that helped me let go and forgive. Remember that this is often a lengthy process, so don’t give up when you don’t see results immediately. If I can do it, so can you. The best of luck!

  • How to Process Intense Feelings with Mindfulness: 4 Powerful Steps

    How to Process Intense Feelings with Mindfulness: 4 Powerful Steps

    “Feelings come and go, like clouds in the sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

    In today’s fast-paced world, it’s easy to find ourselves caught in a whirlwind of intense emotions.

    Whether it’s the stress of looming deadlines, the anxiety of an uncertain future, or the frustration of unexpected setbacks, intense feelings often hijack our mental well-being, leaving us feeling drained and powerless in their wake.

    In such moments, our instinctual response is often to either suppress these emotions or allow them to dictate our actions, leading to a cycle of reactivity and emotional turbulence.

    Growing up, I learned to fear emotions. In my tumultuous home, it often felt like there was no room for feelings—they were either ignored, mocked, or punished. I adapted by suppressing my emotions and disconnecting from my heart.

    I became a quiet, shy, and sensitive child who didn’t make waves, the proverbial good girl, always pleasing and performing, never complaining, saying no, or acting out. Disconnected from myself, I had trouble connecting with others.

    I began disappearing into my own world. Convinced there was something wrong with me, I lived in a perpetual state of internal angst and shame, wanting and fearing connection all at once. For years I was plagued with codependency, negativity, c-PTSD symptoms, one-sided relationships, anxiety, and anger buried so deep I didn’t even see it. I lived on autopilot—successful by external standards but internally in emotional turmoil.

    It was only after becoming a parent that all that I buried within began to surface, catching me off guard. Parenting, more challenging than I ever anticipated, forced me to confront the pain, trauma, and difficult truths that I had been repressing all my life. I began to unravel.

    When we live on autopilot, we become slaves to our reactions, blindly following the same patterns of behavior without pausing to consider their consequences. I know I was—feeling lost in a whirlwind of suppressed emotions and disconnected from my true self.

    But amidst the chaos of my internal turmoil, I discovered a transformative path forward: mindfulness. This ancient practice became my beacon of clarity in the midst of emotional storms, inviting me to step off the treadmill of reactivity and into the present moment.

    By embracing mindfulness, I learned to approach my intense emotions with curiosity and compassion, gradually unraveling the layers of pain and trauma buried deep within. In the process, I unearthed a reservoir of resilience, wisdom, and love buried deep within me.

    How to Process Intense Feelings with Mindfulness

    Emotions are an integral part of the human experience, and they often manifest as sensations in our bodies. They arise in response to challenging situations or perceived threats, and our immediate response is often automatic and primal. However, by fostering greater self-awareness and empathy toward our own emotional experiences, we can begin to navigate the landscape of intense feelings with greater clarity and resilience.

    Step 1: Name It in the body.

    Think about a recent situation that stirred up strong emotions within you. It could be a disagreement with a loved one, a work-related challenge, or even a personal setback. Pause and ask yourself: What did you feel in your body during that moment? Did your chest tighten, your heart race, or your eyes well up?

    When my kids were younger, I was plagued by anxiety. Between a lack of sleep, having to be “on” 24/7 as a parent, the stress of trying to make a living, and feeling all alone (we moved across the country), I was constantly on edge. And so, I would react to small things with big emotions. It always started with my body tensing up and my heart suddenly racing while thoughts like, “I can’t handle this!” ran through my head.

    Emotions first show up as sensations in the body. We have no control over these natural responses—they’re programmed into our DNA. The good news is that these bodily sensations are like emotional signposts. If we pay attention, we can recognize what they are trying to tell us. And by naming what comes up, we can gain clarity and understand what is unfolding within us. It’s an empowering first step to mindful emotional processing.

    Step 2: Breathe into it.

    Mindfulness teaches us to pay attention. It allows us to recognize what is happening in our body, with compassion and without judgment. That awareness is power—the power to respond from our authentic selves instead of reacting from our habitual selves.

    Think back to a time when you had a heated argument with a loved one. Your immediate reaction was likely intense, with emotions running high. But what if, in that moment, you had taken a deep breath and allowed yourself to pause?

    When we are triggered, the primal part of our brain gets activated first, well before our intellectual brain gets the signal. The amygdala (our reptilian brain) controls our automatic reactions, which depend on our upbringing, defenses, and coping mechanisms we developed over the years. Taking a few deep breaths allows us to halt this reaction just long enough for our pre-frontal cortex and intellect to kick in.

    Over time, this simple act of focusing on breathing while being flooded with waves of intense emotions helped me stay calm in stressful situations and tampered down my reactions. It was often just enough for me to regain perspective and respond as an adult, not an overwhelmed child still trying to be seen or heard. Now if I feel triggered or ungrounded, I remember to stay focused on the breath. It always carries me to the other side.

    Step 3: Remember that emotions are energy in motion.

    Emotions are energy, and they’re always in motion. We get stuck on feelings because we disconnect from them, repress them, and pretend they’re not there. Or we hold onto them. We let them fester. They don’t get processed and then released, so we can’t move on.

    Working through emotions starts with simply allowing them to be. We’re no longer fighting them, getting stuck on them, or running from what comes up. Instead, we let the feelings come and go, without attaching a story. It’s good to practice this when you’re calm, so that you know what to do in the heat of the moment.

    Learn to just notice and allow what happens to you internally. As you observe the sensations in your body and feel what comes up, bring a sense of compassion for yourself, especially if intense feelings show up. This is difficult work, so take baby steps and make sure you take care of yourself daily—body and mind.

    Mindfulness teaches us to accept all emotions and increases our window of tolerance to stressors. We get more resilient and authentic. We begin to listen to our feelings with openness, non-judgment, and compassion—and that’s transformative.

    Feelings are messengers. They inform us about what we value and what we don’t want. For me, the anxiety was screaming at me to start taking care of myself. I was neck-deep in raising children and working and running a house, and I neglected to show up for myself. The truth is, I was deeply unhappy, and once I accepted that, I was able to draw some boundaries and change what wasn’t working.

    Think of the last time you experienced disappointment or frustration. Instead of pushing these feelings away, allow your emotions to just be there without judgment. Focus on your body. Where is that feeling located? What does it look like? What does it need from you? Whatever comes up, give it attention.

    As you observe these sensations, you can journal about them, or take them for a walk. Maybe your body needs to shake it off or dance it out. Do whatever feels right to move that energy through and out of your body. By engaging with your emotions, you enable them to flow through you, rather than stagnate and fester.

    Step 4: Respond from your wise self.

    Awareness is half of the equation; the other half is action—and how you respond depends on your state of mind. With mindfulness, you don’t get swept up in the turmoil of emotional reactions; you’re no longer allowing autopilot to take you for a spin. Instead, you notice, breathe through what is, and tap into a higher perspective. And then you choose your response based on what makes sense for you.

    Ask yourself, “What’s the best way to handle this situation?” Do you need to take action, advocate for yourself, set a boundary, reach out for support, step back and regroup, or take care of yourself to restore and rebalance your energy?

    For me, overcoming anxiety was a journey of learning to recognize when anxiety arose, to breathe through the discomfort with compassion, and to choose a response that aligned with my values and well-being.

    Whether it was removing myself from triggering spaces and situations, taking more time for myself, seeking support, or letting go of perfection, I started prioritizing my health and well-being. It wasn’t always easy, and I had to let some things go, but slowly I shifted toward inner peace and authenticity.

    I also learned to not take things personally, recognizing that everyone experiences challenging emotions and that responding gracefully is a sign of strength.

    —

    If emotional regulation was not modeled for you growing up, it can feel like navigating through a minefield. For years, I struggled with understanding and managing my feelings, which, in turn, impacted my relationships, my well-being, and my overall happiness.

    With mindfulness and consistent practice, however, I was able to break free from old patterns, heal from past wounds, and cultivate emotional resilience and well-being. Intense emotions started to lose their grip on me, and I became more peaceful and less reactive. I discovered the grace of self-compassion and learned to ride the waves of big feelings, knowing that they would eventually subside.

    Emotions are an intricate part of our lives, and using mindfulness can help us navigate them more effectively. We don’t have to fear them. It’s possible to regulate our emotions and cultivate a more mindful and graceful approach to life’s challenges.

    By actively engaging with our emotions, rather than reacting on instinct, we can unlock a newfound sense of control and wisdom, creating a more harmonious relationship with our emotions and the world around us.

  • We Cannot Conquer Hate with More Hate (Only with Love)

    We Cannot Conquer Hate with More Hate (Only with Love)

    “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.” ~Martin Luther King, Jr.

    I suspect that most people are victims of hate. Wars happen because of hate. Your mental, emotional, and even physical balance is lost because of hate. Hate destroys joy and happiness.

    Think about the last time you felt intense emotions of hate—for another person, for a group of people, or even for yourself. Just thinking about it will make you feel not so nice. Now, as you think about those feelings of hate, simply observe yourself.

    Observe your mind, your thoughts, your body, your breath; observe how you feel in your gut. You will notice how they all go out of balance.

    If someone were to do an experiment with you while you were feeling these emotions of hate, and plug up various monitors to you, they would observe how your blood pressure, your heart rate, your physical body, and your neurons were all going out of balance.

    But we don’t need to do any of that because we can feel it. We don’t need scientific experiments to prove that hate affects every part of us.

    And anything that affects us individually affects the whole world. Because the world is made of many more people like us. You and I aren’t different at all; we are both the same.

    And whatever you see in the external world is a manifestation of our collective inner state. Whenever wars happen, they reflect the inner hate and anger within people. But can hate be destroyed with more hate?

    Imagine a can of fuel has spilled and caught fire, and this fire threatens to burn an entire forest. Can you put this fire out by pouring more of the same fuel?

    If you pour more of the same fuel, what will happen? The fire will keep becoming bigger and bigger until it consumes everything in its path.

    What you need to do is find some other material. In the forest you can take some soil and use it to put out the fire. If there is a group of friends and they all take the soil and pour it over the fire, the fire will be put out faster.

    The same applies to hate. Hate can’t be destroyed with more hate.

    The only way to end wars or make peace with people who’ve hurt us or who hold opposing worldviews is to recognize that we are fundamentally all the same, and we need to work together for mutual growth and progress. The only way to resolve conflict is to become aware of our higher nature.

    I’ll share an example from my own life.

    My grandparents were very wealthy. They came from a region called Sindh, and for thousands of years my ancestors have been traders and travelers.

    Maybe you’ve heard of the Indus Valley civilization.

    They used to travel in caravans across the world to trade spices, dry fruits, gems, carpets, and handicrafts.

    They had huge mansions, horses, gold, precious gems, and lots of material wealth. But one fine day, India was partitioned by the British into two countries—India and Pakistan.

    Sindh, where they were living, became a part of Pakistan, and they were forced to leave everything and come to this side of India. They had to make a decision between continuing to practice their faith or holding onto their material wealth. They decided to continue practicing their faith.

    When they came to India, with nothing, they were labeled as refugees. They had to live in camps where over 200 people shared a single toilet.

    But even then, they understood the power of words and petitioned the government not to call them refugees but “displaced people.”

    They were not looking for a handout or ‘refuge.’ They did not want people to feel sorry for them or treat them as victims.

    Growing up, they made sure they didn’t teach us to hate anyone. They didn’t ask us to hate the British nor did they ask us to hate the people of Pakistan. Instead, they taught us to focus on learning and growing ourselves.

    They taught us to be loving, to be compassionate, and to move ahead. This changed our perspective on so many things.

    In fact, they taught us that the whole world was ours. We are not restricted by geography. They taught us to laugh and live life with gratitude every moment.

    Today when I look back, I feel blessed and lucky that they didn’t teach me to hate. If they had, I would be stuck in a cycle of hate instead of moving ahead.

    We all have energy; what matters is where we focus and use it.

    Right now, set the intention to replace your hate with love, whether it’s hatred for someone else or for yourself.

    Empathy, understanding, and forgiveness have immense power. The moment you try to understand or forgive you are no longer caught in the clutches of hate. Maybe someone wronged you, maybe you felt hurt at that moment, but that moment is gone. And there’s a good chance they didn’t mean to hurt you; they were just hurting inside and didn’t realize what they were doing.

    The same is true for you. Instead of blaming or berating yourself for your mistakes and shortcomings, recognize that you’ve always done the best you could given your background, conditioning, and coping skills.

    Self-hatred won’t change the things you’ve done in the past; it will just make you more likely to do things you’ll feel bad about. And hatred toward other people won’t change how they are; if anything, hateful words and actions will just inflame them more—but with understanding and kindness, we actually have a chance of learning and growing together.

    Hate is like a chain; it binds you. The moment you forgive, you are cutting those chains to the past. You are free.

    The moment you forgive, you create a chance for love to grow. Send love to everyone. Because love has the power to win any battle, even the one within.

    And if this is hard for you, be kind to yourself. Allow yourself time to heal. Sometimes allowing yourself to be where you are is the most loving thing you can do for yourself. And that love for yourself can eventually expand to include love for the people who’ve hurt you (which doesn’t have to mean condoning their actions or allowing them to hurt you again).

    One beautiful exercise is to consider everyone a part of yourself. Will you hate your left hand just because you love your right hand more? They are both part of you. Yes, sometimes your left hand might get hurt, but you won’t hate it.

    You will, in fact, take better care of it. You will be more loving and attentive.

    Similarly, if you look at everyone as a part of this single existence, it will be easier to look at them with love.

    Everyone has an inner light, though sometimes you have to look a little harder to find it. It all starts with love.

    Before I go, I want you to think of the most loving experience you have ever had. When did you feel immense love? This beautiful feeling of love that transcends all boundaries. Love that transcends all barriers.

    Close your eyes and feel this love.

    Then, when you feel it, observe yourself and notice how everything feels balanced and in a state of bliss.

    Mentally, you will feel creative. Physically, you will feel this beautiful energy. And emotionally, you will feel nourished. That’s what love does to you.

    The best glimpse into your own inner spirituality is through love.

    The world needs a lot more love, and each one of us has the potential to create a more loving world by starting with ourselves.

    That’s how we truly end hate—within ourselves and in the world: with love.

  • Why I Love My Anger and How It Can Be a Force for Good

    Why I Love My Anger and How It Can Be a Force for Good

    “Where there is anger, there is always pain underneath.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    “I don’t know why I’m so angry,” my mother said.

    It was 3 a.m., and my mother was standing outside my door. I had awoken suddenly to hear feet stomping up and down the hallway on one of my last visits to my childhood home before dementia and breast cancer really took hold of her.

    “Phht, me either.” I tried to empathize, but inside of me rose my own fear and anger, as my siblings and I had watched her decline over the years, yet at the same time, anger was not new to her.

    Today, when I think back on this night and so many others like it, the question that I ask now is not “Why are you so angry?” but “Why are you not angrier?” 

    The truth is, I didn’t see a lot of anger in my family growing up, but being a highly sensitive person, I felt it all. I saw the occasional outburst, but I felt every one of my mother’s facial expressions, tones, and movements that signalled distress. I felt it in the room, along with the myriad of other emotions that human nervous systems naturally feel but have learned so well are not always appropriate.

    Two things I did see and feel were love and happiness, so I am grateful for that. But we are so much more than that.

    My suppression of anger was learned very young. If you don’t see something reflected in the mirror around you, it can’t exist.

    I remember so clearly, when I was thirteen, my mother came home from the hospital after her first partial mastectomy with a drainage tube attached to her chest.

    We sat in the living room as it was explained to us, as children, what had happened.

    I don’t remember the word cancer, but as a child, I could have blocked it or simply just not understood.

    What I do remember is the feeling in my body. I can still feel it now. The rising sensation of tightness and contraction that rose up into my throat and begged for expression. But as I looked around the room, I couldn’t see that sensation anywhere else.

    I remember pursing my lips together, probably tightening my jaw to reinforce the guards in case the tightness burst out into the room.

    It was one of the most confusing moments of my life. I understand it now.

    The news felt big and the emotions felt big, as did the overlay of rage—at the situation, others, or myself; I don’t know which. But it had nowhere to go. I felt suffocated.

    I excused myself to “go out with my friends,” which must have seemed like an odd response, but it was the only thing I knew how to do. I didn’t go out with friends. I escaped into the cold night air so I could breathe. I walked and walked, unconsciously moving through an internal freeze.

    The emotions never seemed to go away; they only seemed to thicken as I developed more and more armor. I learned that escaping felt good. I loved my family deeply, so it didn’t make sense to me when I felt relief to leave the house and go out drinking with friends.

    It wasn’t just moving toward pleasure as a teenager; it was avoidance of pain.

    I disconnected more and more from myself and my internal turmoil, and the mask on my outside grew more and more protective, smiley, and sturdy. It became who I was.

    Repressing my anger, sadness, and fear felt like the only option, yet it was literally killing me inside as I developed the opposite expression of external perfectionism.

    Flawless, nice, smiling, impeccably high standards on the outside.

    Complete chaos and a raging inner critic on the inside.

    This growing monster morphed into the extreme control of an eating disorder that nearly took my life. The binging and purging of bulimia felt like feeding an insatiable hunger followed by a complete release and restabilization of the perfection.

    In retrospect, I see this was a young girl’s own internal method of coping and self-regulation. Of course, in reality, it was anything but.

    Thanks to an attuned and compassionate doctor, I was able to finally be seen and heard as someone who was more than an acting-out teen, who was really in trouble. This was the turning point, and I wish I could say it all turned around, but the journey ahead of me was long.

    The road to healing has been one of reclamation.

    Slowly reclaiming my body, piece by piece. Nurturing and nourishing her and paying attention to her needs. Including those parts society has deemed not right or unacceptable.

    Reclaiming and feeling my emotions, all of them. But mostly reclaiming my right to anger.

    During my forties, when I experienced a period of burnout, I realized that anger was the last stone to uncover. I had been skirting around it for decades.

    Even as a yoga and mindfulness student and teacher, I never went into the energy of anger fully, always instructed to notice and surf the emotions on the way to peace and happiness.

    Yet anger was the part of me that needed self-love more than anything else. And the rewards anger gave me in return were not what I expected.

    I did not become an angry person. I became a more confident and powerful person who rose above shame and people-pleasing. I set boundaries more easily because I loved myself more. It gave me back my wholeness.

    Access to the energy of anger also afforded me access to the opposite end of the emotional scale: excitement and enthusiasm.

    Research now clearly tells us that repressed anger can contribute to anxiety, depression (repression), chronic illnesses, fatigue, and pain, and I can feel the truth in that.

    But we have learned very well how to cope. We rationalize (it’s not that bad), minimize (other people have it so much worse), and desperately escape ourselves looking for worth in people-pleasing, validation, praise, and permission.

    We leave our bodies in search for perfection that doesn’t exist and end up continually feeling not smart enough, thin enough, healthy enough, young enough, or good enough.

    The fear of expressing anger is compounded by being labeled as “angry,” which leads to further invalidation and invisibility. That is only what happens if you stay stuck in the stories of blame.

    I uncovered my capacity to befriend anger safely and harness its power to speak, protect, and stand up for myself from a place of self-love.

    I now know that:

    • Anger is the energy of healthy entitlement that says, “I have a right to be here” and speaks up against injustice from a place of ultimate, fierce love.
    • Anger is the energy of healthy aggression that protects your own worth and naturally sets boundaries that protect your body, time, and energy.
    • Anger is the place that defines clearly what you value and what you stand for and love.
    • Anger is the healing we need to step out of the program of perfectionism and the “good girl” (or boy) into our true, whole, authentic aliveness.

    I love anger in all its forms. It is a mobilizer for good in the world, and if you are reading this, I’m guessing you are not someone who will use it in toxic ways for war and destruction.

    You can harness it in small ways to access the true power of your voice, your breath. and the full capacity of fierce love.

    There is often a pot of stored anger to drain first so you can then move through it gently, lovingly, and listen to its valuable messages. To do this:

    • Notice where and when you tighten, contract, or feel annoyed or irritable.
    • Breathe into those areas in your body to create space around them.
    • Inhale and contract right into the areas of anger, including your hands and feet, and then release it with a sigh, sound, scream, or growl.
    • Notice what anger is pointing you toward: What needs to be protected that you value? What do you need? What needs to be said? What do you miss or grieve or worry about? See what rises now.

    Remember, you are a living, growing, learning, and expanding human, and we can heal not in spite of our anger, but through it.

  • How to Transform Your Relationship by Feeling Your Feelings

    How to Transform Your Relationship by Feeling Your Feelings

    It was late at night, and my husband and I were having an argument about the same subject we’d been arguing about for two decades—cooking and cleaning.

    The argument seemed to come out of nowhere. We were having a nice evening together, the kids were asleep, we were watching a movie and chatting. And then all of a sudden, the conversation went off on a tangent, and it felt like the ground we were standing on suddenly split and a deep dark cavern opened up between us.

    Here we were now, standing on either side, an insurmountable ravine between us, throwing anger and pain and disappointment at each other. Trying to convince each other of our own rightness in the situation.

    For the whole of our marriage, the patterns have been that I cook and organize the kids, he cleans and takes instructions about the kids—which, on paper, might seem reasonable, but we were both holding deep amounts of resentment, bitterness, and anger about this arrangement.

    It was not an arrangement that had been discussed. It was an arrangement that just evolved, and for some reason it drove us both into wild flames of anger.

    For days after these arguments, we would retreat inside our emotional selves, like wounded animals tending to the emotional wounds we had suffered. After we both emerged, we wouldn’t discuss the argument; it felt like it had taken so much out of our lives that we just wanted to skip onto the next thing. If I am honest, I knew I didn’t have the tools to discuss it in a way in that wouldn’t ignite the argument again.

    Why open up the wound when it felt like it had healed?

    But, of course, it wouldn’t have healed, and it would just come up again a few weeks or months down the line.

    Cut to five years later and the arrangements haven’t actually changed much, but these arguments have disappeared. Not only have the arguments stopped, the deep old bitterness and resentment have gone. And instead, the discussions about cleaning, organizing the children, and cooking are now mostly along the lines of how can I help you with what’s on your plate today?

    How did this happen? What radical change did we instigate, or did we just swap partners to people who were kinder and more reasonable?

    No, in these five years I learned about how the brain processes and perceives emotions, and that unlocked a totally new way of being in my relationship.

    What felt so radical for me is that when I learned how to work with my emotions in a different way, it changed how my husband (and my kids) started dealing with their emotions.

    I didn’t need to explain or discuss anything with them. But by showing up differently, I changed the emotional patterns of my family, and that was the most empowering thing I’ve experienced in my whole life.

    Here are five of the realizations that made the biggest shifts for me.

    1. What we learned about emotions is usually wrong. 

    Humans are meant to have emotions, and to have the whole range of emotions—anger and fear, sadness and despair, love and joy. These are all natural. But many of us learned that some (or even all) emotions are somehow wrong and we shouldn’t have them.

    Emotions are not meant to be suppressed, avoided, ranted about, thrown at other people, or handled in any of the other ways most of us learned to deal with emotions.

    Emotions are meant to be seen, felt, and heard. I like to think of emotions being like clouds. They arrive, we feel them, and then they drift out.

    What causes so many problems for us is that most of us didn’t learn to feel them in this way. We didn’t grow up with the sense that emotions are manageable, and that it’s possible to hold them gently in our bodies, allowing them to drift in and then drift out.

    This is because our parents and caregivers (and their parents and caregivers) usually struggled with their emotions, so we now struggle with ours.

    For example, anger: What did your parents do when you were a child and felt anger? Most of us would have been banished to our rooms for saying things in anger. Or maybe our parents tried to jolly us out of feeling anger, made fun of us, or told us to just get over it. Or our anger was met with our parents’ anger, and we were punished.

    What that teaches our brain is that anger is wrong. We shouldn’t feel anger. So, when anger comes up and we don’t know how to hold it, we can end up throwing it at other people by arguing or shouting, or keep it locked inside where it might feel totally uncomfortable and painful. Or we end up having endless angry looping obsessive thoughts that we just can’t stop.

    Anger ends up feeling very uncontrollable for us, impossible to have in our bodies, and scary for us to witness in others, and it can become a destructive force in our lives.

    But there is a different way with emotions, and this is what emotions actually want. They want to be seen, felt, and heard.

    Not to throw the anger at others or keep it inside to feel like it’s destroying our being, but to learn how to feel safe with it. To know that we can feel more at ease experiencing anger, so the anger can come up into our bodies and then come out as we release it.

    2. When emotions are high, logic goes out the door.

    When emotions activate, it’s like a giant lens comes up and we start to see the world through the lens of that emotion. So, when we feel anger, we see the world through the lens of anger. Which makes it seem like there are so many upsetting things in the world.

    Or fear—we see the world through the lens of fear and it seems like so many things are scary or terrifying.

    But the thing to know here is that it’s simply the emotion that is coloring our vision. If we are able to work with the emotion, then we stop seeing so many scary-terrifying things and start to see the world as a more nuanced and relaxed experience.

    So if I am seeing anger activate in my husband, or fear or sadness or any emotion, I know that he is seeing the world through this lens and there are no ‘facts’ or ‘logic’ that will change that.

    I, therefore, am not going to engage in conversations about cooking and clearing when he is in his emotions. Or anything that feels important to me. I will wait to talk about things that feel important to me when he isn’t emotional.

    3. We shouldn’t listen to our thoughts when we are emotional.

    Similarly, when I am feeling anger, instead of allowing my mind to find 234 things to feel angry about and then accusing my husband of being the cause of all of them, I am going to recognize that I feel anger and I am going to work with that emotion instead of throwing my anger at him.

    My feelings are my feelings, and his feelings are his feelings. And although my brain wants to say, “He’s the reason I am feeling angry! He’s to blame!”, the anger I feel is actually bigger and older than him. Most of our emotions arrived way before our current situation, experience, or relationship—even though it doesn’t feel that way. 

    Most of our feelings are old because we never got to process them—to see, feel, and hear them—so they stay trapped inside of us. So maybe we feel some new anger about a situation, but it gets added to the decades-old pile of anger that we haven’t processed, and that’s why it feels so very big, so very significant. and so painful.

    Emotions are yearning to integrate; they want to be released from our bodies, and so they look for things to bring them up, in the hope we will finally allow them to be here and fully allow them to be seen, felt, and heard.

    4. My emotions are my emotions; your emotions are your emotions. 

    By taking responsibility for our feelings as our own, we can move through them much more quickly than trying to work through them together. We get to get out the other side. And if we want to have discussions with our partners—say about cleaning and cooking and kids and arrangements—it’s on the other side of our feelings that we want to do it.

    When the anger has released, when the lens has been wiped clean. When we are through that feeling.  Then we can have empathy, understanding, and a much more expanded vision of our lives and relationships.

    Once I worked through my piles of historical anger, rage, and sadness that had accumulated over the decades of my life, and the pains of disappointment I had felt but tried to run away from, I automatically started to see the relationship I had totally differently.

    I was then able to communicate with my husband how I saw experiences and situations in our relationship from a place of calm. When I wasn’t throwing resentment and anger at him, and not having conversations when he was emotional as well, our communication totally changed its texture. We started to negotiate our needs and find the space to support each other from a place of empathy.

    5. What do emotions need? To be seen, felt, and heard.

    Emotions are looking for these three simple things. The first is to be seen, to be acknowledged—not blamed or judged (or blaming other people for having emotions). A simple step is to just see them:

    Oh, I see some anger has activated here!

    I am feeling some fear.

    What am I feeling? Gosh, I think it’s some disappointment, and some sadness. 

    And what emotions want so very much is to be met with empathy, understanding, and compassion:

    I am feeling so much anger right now; gosh, this is a lot! It’s uncomfortable and hard to stay with this feeling, but I understand why anger is here. This has always been a hard emotion for me. 

    Fear is a lot! But I am going to offer some compassion as I hold this fear, to sit with myself in it, and give myself a lot of empathy. 

    Disappointment is a tricky emotion for me! Can I offer myself some understanding here? To acknowledge it’s not easy for me as I learn how to be with this emotion with more kindness and gentleness?

    We need to step away from our thoughts in this process, to see that the emotions we experience are actually held in our body, and it’s in our body that we get to fully feel them.

    It’s by fully feeling our feelings, rather than getting lost in our thoughts, that we get the chance to release the intensity of our feelings.

    Not by following along with the blaming and judging ourselves or others.

    The last part is to hear them. Emotions are incredible guides for us when we learn how to feel and release them. They always come with guidance around our unmet needs. They aren’t here to punish us, but instead show us where we can become more authentic, more in line with our values, and stronger in our boundaries.

    When we decide to give ourselves space and support through our emotional reactions, this is what changes the texture of our relationships.

    What could your relationship be like if you were able to move through those big, sticky feelings that arise, that may cause conflicts or make you react differently to how you want to react?

    It’s not just the case of intimate relationships with our partners, but also true of our relationships with anyone we love. When we speak to our parents or siblings, our extended family, or friends, and we have big difficult feelings about them, if we can work through those feelings our relationships will automatically change.

    When we can unblock our relationships from big piles of shame, fear, anger, or loneliness, we can move into spaces where much deeper intimacy, mutual empathy, and support live.

    It’s a wildly beautiful place to live, in trust and connection, knowing that we can still have feelings, we can still have conflict—but when we can work with our emotions, we don’t stay stuck in a place of raw, untended pain that arises and derails our lives and our relationships.