Posts tagged with “emotions”
4 Things You Need to Know About Your Hurting Inner Child
âShe held herself until the sobs of the child inside subsided entirely. I love you, she told herself. It will all be okay.â ~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 couldnât feel love and empathy for myself.
Most of the time, I was either very harsh toward myself …
A Little Hope and Encouragement for Hard Times
âIf your path demands you to walk through hell, walk as though you own the place.â ~Unknown
Trigger warning: This content contains references to self-harm and suicide.
It was in the spring semester during graduate school. I was living alone in a one-bedroom apartment and working nearly full-time hours at night.
The anti-depressants werenât working so well. I was keeping up with my therapist, but I suppose it was too much.
I felt too much. It hurt so much and couldnât handle it. You could list out the symptoms of depression, and I had them all.
Unable to deal with …
Transforming Pain into Power: The Magic of Emotional Alchemy
If it werenât for my darkest moments, I wouldnât appreciate the life I have today. Iâve overcome a lot, and my biggest battle wasnât the hurdles themselves but how they made me feel, draining my energy and desire for life until I nearly lost it completely. Iâm sharing my story to give you hope. If I can transform pain into beauty through emotional alchemy, you can, too.
Iâm not going to lie and say my journey has been easy. Nor is it over; overcoming a lifetime of dysfunctional patterns from a toxic childhood and challenging adult experiences takes time. However, …
How Our Emotional Triggers Can Actually Be Great Gifts
âBe grateful for triggers, they point to where you are not free.â ~Unknown
Your triggers are your responsibility. I know, it doesnât land so nicely, does it? But itâs the truth. The moment you truly understand this, you let others off the hook and youâre able to actually see triggers as gifts pointing to where youâre not whole.
Iâve heard this many times before and felt like retorting with, âBut, he/she/they didâŠ.â Just because your triggers are your responsibility doesnât mean that others wonât do hurtful or infuriating things. It just means the only thing you can control is your …
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 todayâs fast-paced world, itâs easy to find ourselves caught in a whirlwind of intense emotions.
Whether itâs 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, …
How to Free Yourself from Pain from the Past
âThere are two levels to your pain: the pain that you create now, and the pain from the past that still lives on in your mind and body.â ~Eckhart Tolle
When I read this quote, it stopped me in my tracks. So much of our pain and suffering in the present is caused by us repeating cycles and dwelling on pain from the past. We want so badly to resolve our suffering. But our search for resolution often involves repeating the painful cycles we have already been through, in the hope that someone or something will change.
Why I Love My Anger and How It Can Be a Force for Good
âWhere there is anger, there is always pain underneath.â ~Eckhart Tolle
âI donât know why Iâm so angry,â 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.
âPhht, me either.â 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, …
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 weâd been arguing about for two decadesâcooking 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, …
How to Release the Fear That Keeps Our Lives Small
âBeing cut off from our own natural self-compassion is one of the greatest impairments we can suffer.â ~Gabor Mate
It was late at night, and I couldnât sleep. I could almost hear the thudding of fear that was exploding in my chest. I tried to identify the singular cause of the fear, but it didnât feel like there was just one thing.
There were so many things.
It was the world at large and problems in it; it was how my kid was feeling this morning when they got home from school. It was the rift between my husband and …
7 Steps to Deconstruct Your Anger So It No Longer Controls You
âHolding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.â ~Buddha
For as long as I can remember Iâve struggled with anger.
My earliest memories of my anger are from junior high school, but it was around much earlier than that.
The only emotion that was ever shown in my house growing up was anger. My dad had an anger problem, and my mother showed no emotion at all. This is what emotional normal looked like to meâeither nothing or anger.
I was the …
How to Stop Feeling Overwhelmed by Other Peopleâs Strong Emotions
âIt is not your responsibility to figure out what someone else is feeling and why. Let go of the illusion that âfixingâ their bad mood will make you feel better.â ~Sarah Crosby
Some years ago, I was talking to my husband on the phone. He sounded annoyed about something to do with his work, but I noticed an intense emotional reaction in myself. Immediately, my heart contracted and my stomach lurched. I could feel a runaway train of emotions activate within me.
My whole body was awash with nausea, and I felt so very uncomfortable.Â
This was a familiar and …
How I Calm and Release Intense Emotions of Anger, Sadness, and Frustration
âYou donât have to be positive all the time. Itâs perfectly okay to feel sad, angry, annoyed, frustrated, scared, or anxious. Having feelings doesnât make you a ânegative person.â It makes you human.â ~Lori Deschene
In November, I was on an emotional roller coaster full of sudden unexplainable fits of anger, hysterically crying for no reason, barely sleeping, feeling urges to physically kick, hit, and scream.
One of the main triggers was when my partner would go out without me.
Heâd go out with his friends to play pool and I would immediately shut down, shut him out, and turn …
Stop Catastrophizing: How to Retrain Your Brain to Stress and Worry Less
âDonât believe everything you think.â ~Unknown
A couple years ago, I entered a depressive state as I sat through many long, eventless days while on partial disability due to a bilateral hand injury. I was working one to two hours a day max in my job, per doctorâs orders. The medical experts couldnât say if or when I would feel better.
As I sat in pain on my sofa, day after day, running out of new TV series to occupy my time, I couldnât help but catastrophize my future
Whatâll happen if I canât use the computer again? My whole …
Releasing Fascia: A Simple Way to Reduce Tension, Pain, and Disease
âTake care of your body, itâs the only place you have to live.â ~Jim Rohn
I hear this happens to so many, but when it happens to you, itâs unsettling. I didnât know what was going on with me, and I wasnât getting any satisfying answers either.
Most days were good, and I felt fine and went about my regular routine wearing my many hats: mother of two young kids, human mom to three fur babies, a household-manager-of-all-the-things and full-time dental hygienist. And then out of the blue, it could hit me like a ton of bricks⊠the backache, neck …
How Pain Can Be a Teacher and Why We Need to Stop Avoiding It
âThe strongest hearts have the most scars.â ~Unknown
I always hated pain when growing up. For as long as I can remember I tried to avoid it. Physical pain was uncomfortable, but emotional pain was the real torture. It was sometimes easier to have a fight and stop communicating than to have a challenging conversation.
Disconnecting emotionally and withdrawing from painful experiences was my de facto subconscious strategy. I still pursued goals and succeeded, but this didnât feel painful to me because I used my passion and bravado to drive through the long hours and grueling work.
If I wasn’t …
To All the Highly Sensitive Souls Out There â The World Needs You
“Highly sensitive beings suffer more but they also love harder, dream wider and experience deeper horizons and bliss. When youâre sensitive, youâre alive in every sense of this word in this wildly beautiful world. Sensitivity is your strength. Keep soaking in the light and spreading it to others.â ~Victoria Erickson
I am lying next to my son in his bed before turning the light off one night, in that relaxed space between awake and asleep where he allows himself to feel and share. He tells me that he feels very lonely at school.
He shares his loneliness in the middle …
How I Learned That My Pain is Valid and Worthy of My Own Empathy and Love
âSit with it. Sit with it. Sit with it. Sit with it. Even though you want to run. Even when itâs heavy and difficult. Even though youâre not quite sure of the way through. Healing happens by feeling.â ~Dr. Rebecca Ray
Itâs July 2022 and Iâm in the middle of a red tent at Shambala Music Festival in British Columbia.
I sit elbow to elbow, knee to knee, heart to heart with a group of women who I am meeting for the first time.
Itâs hot and weâre sweaty.
A teacher is leading a healing womb meditation, and she prompts …
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