Tiny Buddha

Tag: emotions

  • 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.

  • I’m Not Sorry for My Tears: A New Movement

    I’m Not Sorry for My Tears: A New Movement

    “Do not apologize for crying. Without this emotion, we are only robots.” ~Elizabeth Gilbert

    A few nights ago, I was at a groovy, loud Mexican restaurant with some friends. In between sips of spicy margaritas and bites of chips with guac, I was talking with one of my friends privately about her latest struggles. She was confiding in me that she was still quite emotional about losing her mom.

    Although it had been two years, she still found herself crying alone and in front of others when she talked or thought about her mother. She mentioned that the week prior, someone at work had asked her a question about her mom and, upon answering, tears had started to flow freely. Then, she was embarrassed and quickly took her hands to her face to wipe the tears and started apologizing profusely.

    “I’m so sorry!” she quipped. “I did not anticipate getting emotional. I apologize for the tears.”

    This stopped me in my tracks. I was literally stymied by it all right then and there. I thought about this, and it hit me. What the heck is wrong with our society? Wait, don’t answer that. There are way too many things, but I’m referring to this one in particular.

    Why do we apologize when we cry? It absolutely should be the opposite. Crying is opening one’s heart and soul. It’s being vulnerable. It’s being real, open, and in touch. It’s exactly what we’re supposed to do when we’re hurting. We are purging ourselves of our sadness with our tears.

    When my boys were little and they would burp or fart, I would always say, “Better out than in,” and this is the same. Better out than in. Let them go. Release the flood. Cry your eyes out. And, for the love of all of us, do not apologize.

    Instead, I propose we start a movement. Instead of apologizing, how about we do the opposite? Upon tears starting to fall, how about saying, “I’m not sorry I’m crying”? This is taking our power back. It’s taking pride in knowing that you are being real, vulnerable, and open.

    My best friend is a therapist. I discussed this with her, and she told me that almost every time a client cries, they apologize to her. Think about that. They are paying her quite a bit of money so that they can be “seen,” and they tell her they are sorry for crying. She told me that she always tells them to never apologize for crying, but that generally doesn’t stop them from saying it in each subsequent meeting.

    After realizing the glaring phenomenon of apologizing when the tears start to flow, I noticed it everywhere. It was exemplified in every reality show on TV, as these seem to be prime platforms to cry. Every single time I witnessed someone crying, they uttered the words, “I’m sorry… ugh, so sorry…” as they tried to compose themselves. I could see the embarrassment in their faces and their mannerisms.

    I also attended a funeral recently and noticed that every time someone relayed a story to me and started to cry, the next words were always “I’m sorry.” It is ubiquitous. I have never been around someone or seen someone on a show or movie say, “I’m not sorry. I’m not sorry for showing you my heart, opening my soul, and being vulnerable.”

    Think about how you feel when you’re with someone who begins to cry. For me, I completely soften inside. No matter what the circumstances. Even if I am mad at the other person, I don’t like them that much, or I don’t know them very well.

    The moment someone cries in my presence, I melt a little inside. Whatever guard I had up, whether it was big or small, it comes down. I truly see them as a feeling soul who just happens to be human. I am drawn to them. I feel connected. I want to be closer to them.

    I am also a bit honored that they feel safe crying in front of me. I feel a little special, even if that is totally unintentional on their part. I feel like they are letting me in and showing me more of who they are.

    So, after coming up with this new manifesto, I knew I needed to start practicing it and see how it felt. It came up two days later. I was telling my husband about a memory I had about his dad, who had recently passed, and in this tender moment, tears started to fall.

    I fell into my rote way of thinking and feeling and quickly apologized.

    “I’m sorry I’m getting emotional,” I said, and then I remembered. Oh shoot, nooooo, not that. So I course-corrected. “I’m not sorry, I mean.”

    The funny thing is that I’m certain he didn’t even notice my backpedaling. I, however, did. I noticed that it felt better to say I wasn’t sorry. It gave me agency. I didn’t feel weak. I felt power in my words and in my tears. And it’s not even about power; it truly is about being real and honest.

    There is power in being completely transparent. Life is hard, and our hearts break a little and a lot, and sometimes often. It is our opportunity to truly live the human experience. To cry is to be human. There is no reason to apologize for being human. Let it go. Let it all out with gusto, and then stand strong and say, “I’m not sorry I’m crying” and see how that feels.

    I’m not sorry.

  • How to Make Shame Your Ally

    How to Make Shame Your Ally

    “Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” ~Brené Brown

    I was walking to my office one day when one of my colleagues gave me a compliment about what I was wearing. I was a little surprised and, without thinking, said something disparaging about my dress and darted off into my office.

    As I sat down, I noticed an intense wave of discomfort all over my body, and dark churning thoughts started attacking me.

    What is wrong with me? I asked myself. Why did I say such a stupid thing? Why couldn’t I just be normal and say thank you, take the compliment, and move on? Why am I always so awkward? 

    As I sat by my desk, I felt like I just wanted to shrivel up and disappear. If the ground had opened up for me right there, I would have willingly jumped into it.

    The reply I had given my colleague started to replay in my mind, each time bringing fresh waves of nausea in my stomach and icy chills running down my back.

    What was happening to me, and why was such a seemingly innocent event feeling so uncomfortable, so painful even?

    When I started to learn about emotions and the role they play in our lives, I noticed a standout feeling that seemed to be quieter, subtler, more invisible than other emotions, but that had possibly the most powerful force of them all. It felt like this emotion’s impact, and how it affected my life and that of many others, was stronger than gravity.

    That feeling was shame.

    When I talk to people about shame now, many people don’t even recognize they feel it. That’s why I consider it an invisible emotion. It exerts a powerful force in our lives, affecting how we behave and what we think of ourselves, and it leads many of us to get lost in loops of self-blame, punishment, and vicious, nasty, self-hating thoughts. 

    When we don’t recognize that we are feeling shame, not only does it erode our self-confidence, but it’s very hard to do anything about it. It’s hard for us to release ourselves from that vicious voice of an inner critic.

    Shame was what I was feeling in the office that day. Shame that I hadn’t been able to make an effortlessly charming reply to my colleague. Shame that I might have sounded stupid. Shame that I was getting it wrong socially, again.

    When I learned about shame, I realized how natural it was that it arose in a situation like this. How so many people feel shame in social situations—in different ways than perhaps me, but shame around other human beings nonetheless.

    Shame isn’t a useless emotion whose job is solely to torment us; it actually has a positive purpose. Shame can be an incredible guide and ally for us when we learn how it operates and why it shows up in our lives, then learn how to work it.

    The first barrier that we face in working with shame is that most of us are carrying too much of it.

    We have accumulated shame throughout our lives—shame that has perhaps been passed on to us by our families; shame that people have thrown at us because they couldn’t deal with their own; and the continuous drip that many of us experienced of being shamed as children, as our parents and caregivers might have used it as an easy and effective way to get us to do what they needed.

    There are myriad ways we accumulate shame, but we know that we have too much when we have this belief that we just aren’t good enough as human beings.

    When we accumulate too much shame but don’t know how to release it, it stays hidden within us, growing as we hide more of ourselves, judge more of ourselves, and continue to believe in the wrongness of who we are.

    We don’t ‘let shame out’ because shame is perhaps one of the most socially unacceptable emotions. If you are talking to friends and someone says, “Oh, I feel so guilty I missed that text you sent,” it would most likely be considered okay.

    But if you said, “I feel so ashamed of myself that I missed your text,” it would likely make the conversation awkward.

    People don’t talk about shame because that in itself can feel inherently shameful. It can activate other people’s shame, and it can add to our own expanse of shame when not properly handled. 

    There were many areas of my life where shame showed up. In my relationship, how I responded to my kids. I even started to notice intense shame when a childhood back injury would flare up, and I wouldn’t be able to walk properly. I would start feeling shame for not being mobile, like I needed to apologize for my injury.

    When I started learning about emotions, I realized how much I needed to unravel the shame I was carrying. So I made it my mission to learn and share everything I could so that I could start to live a life where I felt proud and free of who I was—not trying to make myself smaller or more acceptable, but brazenly free and confident instead. Here are some ideas to support you on your journey to healing and releasing shame.

    The Purpose of Shame

    Shame is a natural emotion that has a purpose, like all emotions. Shame’s job is to help us stay connected to our group by adhering to the group’s social rules, to keep us safe by being connected, and to ensure we stay in line with both the group and our own values and needs.

    For example, if we were told as children that we should be quiet, and at a family gathering we were very loud, shame might have appeared to remind us that our parents would be unhappy with us, so the shame would come to try to slow us down and not risk our connection.

    It makes sense for us to have these shame activations when we are children because our safety and survival relies on us staying in connection with our caregivers. But all too often we carry this shame from childhood into our adult life, where it inhibits us from thriving.

    Or as an adult, we’re going on holiday with a friend, and they suggest a much more expensive hotel than we’d normally pick. We start to feel uncomfortable and notice shame has arisen, and when we explore it, we see that shame is trying to remind us of our values of not spending our money in ways we don’t feel good about.

    This is where shame is trying to be our guide, our ally, so that we can retain both connection with our group and our ability to be authentic to our own needs and values.

    Of course, these shame activations don’t feel good, but when we learn why shame exists, it can support us to work with this emotion so it doesn’t feel so overwhelming.

    Shame Often Binds with Other Emotions

    Do you notice that when you feel certain emotions like fear or anger or grief, shame can appear as well? Like I feel bad for feeling how I am. That I shouldn’t be feeling angry, sad, lonely, fearful, etc.?

    This is because shame often binds with emotions that we might not have been allowed to feel as children, or we would get into trouble for. We might have been told off for feeling angry and shamed for doing so. So shame comes up to try and reduce the amount of anger we feel so we don’t get into trouble. And that pattern stays on into adulthood if we don’t recognize it and start to dismantle this shame bind.

    For me, I had a strong shame bind with fear. I would often be made fun of for always being a “scaredy cat” by my friends as a child, or told not to feel fear by the adults around me—that I was being silly.

    Shame identified fear as an emotion that caused problems in my relationships, so it would appear when fear came up to try and slow the fear down so I wouldn’t show it to other people, thereby protecting my relationships.

    How to Melt the Shame You Are Carrying

    Recognize it’s shame and not a factual report of all of your wrongdoings.

    For me, the first step in working with shame is recognizing that I am feeling shame, and that I am not getting a long, factual report of all the things I am doing wrong in my life.

    Shame is a lens that distorts our vision of ourselves. We don’t see who we really are when shame is activated within us.

    Ask yourself: What does shame feel like for me?

    Shame can feel like:

    • Being uncomfortable in your body.
    • Feeling shy and pulling away.
    • Having a flushed face.
    • Feeling tightness in your throat or nauseous.
    • Struggling to breathe.
    • Needing to look away; having trouble keeping eye contact.
    • Feeling like the bottom is falling out from underneath you.
    • Freezing, shutting down.
    • Being lost for words.

    What does shame feel like for you? What happens to your body when shame activates?

    The next step for me is noticing what I do when I feel shame. How do I respond?

    Potential reactions to shame include:

    • Putting yourself down.
    • Attacking or blaming others—trying to throw the shame onto someone else.
    • Suddenly forgetting what you are going to say.
    • Going blank or freezing.
    • Denying or avoiding.
    • Using an activity to numb out.
    • Withdrawing and pulling away or pulling in.
    • Wanting to disappear, vanish.

    For me, putting myself down and withdrawing from people are my two biggest reactions.

    When we know what it feels like for us, it’s easier to spot when it arises. And when we can acknowledge the shame we are experiencing, and not judge ourselves for having this very natural and normal human emotion, it can help us move out of the shame activation more quickly.

    Use gentle movement to move out of shame’s freeze qualities and connect to your body.

    When we experience shame, we often have this urge to shrink or disappear. And this comes with some rigid freezing sensations in the body. We can feel stuck in our bodies and find it hard to move.

    To support ourselves with this freezing, rigid state, we can offer ourselves some gentle, slow movement. Making sure we are staying connected to our breathing, and that we are indeed breathing, we can rock, sway, hug ourselves, move our hands, wrists, and arms—whatever feels both possible and positive in the moment.

    It can also feel very supporting to give ourselves some comforting physical touch—stroking our face and arms, putting a hand on our heart and giving ourselves a gentle rub, rubbing our arms and giving ourselves a hug, wrapping ourselves up in cozy scarves or blankets, offering gentle, kind, and loving physical support.

    Connect to your breath.

    Keeping in touch with our breath is vital. When we are emotionally overwhelmed, we can either hold our breath or have very shallow breathing, so taking some short inhales and long exhales can start our breathing again and also give us a sense of calm. (The long exhales activate the ‘rest and digest’ part of our nervous system.)

    Offer empathy, validation, and connection.

    All emotions yearn for empathy and validation. Emotions want to be acknowledged, to be seen, to be felt and heard. When we ignore our emotions, or judge ourselves for having them, we inhibit their ability to integrate and release from our bodies.

    Giving ourselves empathy in acknowledging our experience can be so soothing in the midst of a shame activation.

    “It’s so hard to feel all of the uncomfortableness of shame.”

    “It was so painful to feel so much shame around this experience. It makes so much sense though that I felt that.”

    “Shame isn’t easy for anyone to feel! I am going to stay and support myself while I move through this emotion.”

    Remember that curiosity is an antidote to shame.

    Curiosity is a very powerful tool to start melting shame. Curiosity can help us process and support any emotion, but it really supports us in working with shame.

    It feels pleasurable to be curious, so we can ask questions like: Might anyone else feels like this? What is happening to me? In my body? In my thoughts? How are my past experiences affecting how I am feeling now?

    It breaks some of the rigidity that shame creates with “always” and “never” statements: I am always getting this wrong. I never make any progress. I’m always a terrible person.

    When we start being curious and looking for new ideas, new ways of seeing, it can break us out of the tunnel vision, fixation part of shame. And when our vision expands, it feels better for our whole physiology.

    When we learn how to reduce the amount of shame we are carrying, as well as learn the message it’s trying to deliver, shame can be a powerful ally. It can show us where we are straying away from our authenticity and our own boundaries. It can remind us of what is important to us, and how we can stay in safe connection with each other.

    Learning the messages our emotions are trying to deliver is one of the most empowering journeys we can take toward self-healing, confidence, and authenticity.

  • Why I’m Now Welcoming My Anxiety with Open Arms

    Why I’m Now Welcoming My Anxiety with Open Arms

    “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

    I have been anxious for as long as I can remember.

    All of my earliest memories are ones where I was worrying or fearful for one reason or another.

    Thinking back, the first memory I have that is akin to that of an actual anxiety disorder, meaning that the anxiety was interfering with my day-to-day life, was when I was in the first grade and I simply refused to use the computers in the computer lab at school because I was scared of breaking them. It wasn’t just a fear of breaking it; it was the full-blown rabbit hole that my thoughts took me down because of it.

    I worried that if I used the computer, then it would break, then the teacher would yell at me, then I would get suspended, then I would get in trouble with my parents, then they would get into a fight, and then they would break up, and then it would be my fault. And that’s not even the end of the cycle! There were other twists and turns that led to other irrational potential consequences as well.

    I never thought to talk to anybody about troubling thoughts that I was having because I assumed it was normal, that all of my classmates felt the same.

    I have always been a quiet and reserved person. The people around me never let me forget about it either. Even in high school classes, the attention would get focused on me and why I wasn’t talking and laughing with the rest of the kids during group work. Class presentations? Forget about it.

    I always took the failing grade on those assignments.

    I finally saw a psychiatrist when I was sixteen because I did eventually open up to my mother about my issues. There have been numerous medication changes over the years, as sometimes I would get nasty side effects from them, or they just plain didn’t work.

    To be honest, I have never been entirely sure that they have been effective at all. When I voiced this concern to my psychiatrist, she told me flat out that given my history, trauma, and personality, my anxiety was most likely going to be a lifelong condition. I instantly went into denial mode.

    However, she did set me up with a therapist who worked in the outpatient clinic whom I met with several times. Because it was only a short-term thing, we didn’t get to delve deep into my issues, but he gave me tools that actually helped. Even though I have struggled to implement them off and on over the years, I do believe they hold weight.

    All of the brief and very infrequent periods of relative calmness in my life were achieved from remembering these two things.

    The only way to beat anxiety is to accept it and face it. If there was one thing that the therapist made sure to cement in my mind, it was to never run away from it. In fact, he encouraged me to invite it on purpose. At the time I was too immature to understand it. It sounded like a terrible idea. Why would I want to purposely feel like that?

    If you do wind up avoiding the things or situations that trigger your anxiety, it will grow over time and become even harder to contain.

    I remember leaving that appointment feeling like there was some type of parasite living inside my mind. A parasite that feeds on fear, and if I wasn’t careful it would grow into this giant monster that would swallow me whole!

    Flash-forward a few years to when I have a little bit more life experience, some jobs under my belt, some education to complete, a.k.a. real chances to face my anxiety… and I have come to understand what he was talking about.

    Today, I have fully accepted that I am an anxious person. I fully accept that I will always be a little reserved and cautious and live with a tendency to overthink things.

    For example, just last week at work my manager took a phone call and I immediately thought it was about me. My mind led me down that all too familiar rabbit hole. Instantly, the thoughts began flooding my mind.

    It went like this: They have finalized the decision. I am a horrible employee and am about to get fired. I will no longer have an income, and I will lose my apartment. Next, my girlfriend will break up with me, and after that I will die alone on the street, and no one will ever remember me.

    Of course there were other scenarios and weird consequences that my mind conjured up. I liken the experience to some twisted “choose your own adventure story.”

    In reality, the phone call didn’t even have anything to do with me, and the rest of my day just went on as normal. I didn’t die. The world didn’t explode. I didn’t lose my mind. And I didn’t get screamed at.

    It was just the anxiety talking, and I accept that.

    I now know that it can’t hurt me, and it doesn’t make me a bad person. I know that I can be successful in whatever endeavors I embark on in life. I will just have to work a little harder than some people to overcome my own worst enemy… my mind.

    Just like the therapist had explained all those years ago, accepting my anxiety has weirdly taken away its power. It no longer has the grip on me that it once had. It is what it is. It is never EVER going away, so why fight it? I have already hit rock bottom several times thanks to my anxiety, and did it kill me? No, I survived and got back up and kept pushing.

    The best mindset that I have adopted for myself is that my thoughts simply do not define me. Plain and simple. I know that I am going to be anxious whether I DO, and I know that I will be anxious whether I DON’T, so, what the hell, I might as well DO.

    And that right there is the key! Despite that terrible, gut-wrenching sense of terror and unease, you still have control. You have the power to act in opposition to how you feel.

    It’s easier said than done, believe me. But whatever it is that you are scared of facing, don’t put it off any longer. Just do it. It’s the only way that you will eventually realize that in the end, everything will be okay.

    Sure, you might still be anxious, but it will slowly and surely lose its grip on you.

    I forget where I read it, but I saw a quote where somebody said that anxiety is the disease of missed opportunity, and I have never related to anything more in my life.

    I have missed out on countless opportunities in life, some potential life-long memories that I will forever regret missing out on.

    Life is short. It is too beautiful to shy away from. I don’t want to miss any more. From here on out, I am choosing to fight my anxiety by welcoming it with open arms.

  • People Say “Don’t Cry”

    People Say “Don’t Cry”

  • Can’t Just “Let It Go”?

    Can’t Just “Let It Go”?

  • 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.

  • A Little Hope and Encouragement for Hard Times

    A Little Hope and Encouragement for Hard Times

    “If your path demands you to walk through hell, walk as though you own the place.” ~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 weren’t 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 couldn’t handle it. You could list out the symptoms of depression, and I had them all.

    Unable to deal with the stress of college, broken relationships, or other life events, any added stressor seemed unbearable. I cried a lot, had terrible neck pain, and even failed one of my classes.

    I’d hurt myself more with wild hope that the physical pain would outweigh the emotional. It was a low point at the bottom of the pendulum swing.

    When I began to feel like eternal sleep was the only peace in sight, I turned myself in by telling my therapist exactly what I was planning to do. They wasted no time and had me in safe hands quickly.

    That was the second time I went to the mental hospital within a year. I stayed in my room mostly and cried a lot, but the staff were kind and helpful.

    My psychiatrist was concerned about the underlying cause. He eventually landed on clinical depression and general anxiety disorder. After a three-day stay and medication adjustment, I was released.

    Over the next while, I did well enough. Eventually finishing my graduate degree had a positive effect on my chronic migraines.

    I’d had multiple treatments to ease the headaches. Once a migraine attack lasted for two weeks. When they suddenly eased, my doctor basically shrugged and attributed them to stress.

    About a year later, I had a new therapist and psychiatrist. Finally, I was diagnosed with treatment-resistant depression, general anxiety disorder, and borderline personality disorder.

    It explained why I had been through so many medication adjustments, the bouts of insomnia, and the frequent mood swings. I believe that simply having some answers helped.

    My medication was adjusted again, and I began to feel much better. There was no more self-harming, and I grew my support group. I am with the same therapist and on the same medication several years later.

    During all of this, I changed jobs twice, lost a mentor to COVID, and moved to a new house. There were also things going on in my family that were out of my control.

    What was obvious was that I was able to cope with life events much better than before. I learned to adopt a lot of tools to help combat old habits.

    For example, instead of freaking out over a situation, I could take a moment and meditate if able. I was able to considerably lower my stress and anxiety this way.

    Instead of isolating after a rejection, I could seek out a close friend to talk to or go out with. To help me stop thinking negative thoughts about myself, I’d write positive things on sticky notes and place them around the house. Like:

    “You have a good work ethic.”

    “You are a loyal friend.”

    “You have a beautiful smile.”

    Yes, they felt like lies after listening to self-hatred for so long, but perseverance made the difference.

    At some point, I had a moment. A realization.

    Sometimes we go through things and feel like we don’t have the strength to make it through.

    “This is how I go out,” was often a phrase I’ve uttered to myself in defeat. It’s easy to focus on the negative and let ourselves be overwhelmed. That’s why reflection is so important.

    The beauty of it is that if we can push through, the current struggle will shrink behind us like a bend in the road.

    Everything we endure serves to make us stronger and much more fit to face the next challenge.

    Currently, I’m experiencing some things that would have crushed the old me. Obstacles I’ve never faced before. People have repeatedly asked if I am all right.

    “I will be,” is a favorite response of mine. It signifies faith and the belief that things are not static. Things always change.

    Sure, I get sad sometimes, but giving up is out of the question. I’m constantly reminded of the saying:

    “I didn’t come this far to only come this far.” ~Matthew Reilly

    Hope is a beacon I keep burning in my soul. I feed it daily, and it illuminates an otherwise deep darkness.

    I had to go through all of that to be strong enough for right now. All of this—the waiting, the sleepless nights, the hard work—it’s all going to be another bend in the road. A story to share. It’s muscle to climb the next hill.

    I guess you could say I’m owning this struggle. Walking through ‘hell’ like I own the place.

    When new stressors and worries come up, I put them in the pile of things I can’t do anything about. If so-called obligations arise, I am at liberty to decline for my peace of mind.

    When good news comes around, it’s a glimmer of light. Daylight piercing through the other end of my dark tunnel.

    It combines with the light of hope inside and urges me onward and upward. I’m expectantly moving toward it and looking for the next stage in my journey.

    As a final thought, those tough experiences made it possible for me to help and encourage people today.

    There were times that I thought no good could possibly come from the pain. Looking back though, I feel only gratitude. I’m grateful for myself for persevering, for the professionals that helped me, and for my support people that listened.

    If you are facing something difficult, own it in the knowledge that you will get through it. One day you will look back on it and smile.

    Live it.

    Feel it.

    Own it.

    Overcome it.

  • All Emotions Come and Go

    All Emotions Come and Go

  • Transforming Pain into Power: The Magic of Emotional Alchemy

    Transforming Pain into Power: The Magic of Emotional Alchemy

    If it weren’t for my darkest moments, I wouldn’t appreciate the life I have today. I’ve overcome a lot, and my biggest battle wasn’t the hurdles themselves but how they made me feel, draining my energy and desire for life until I nearly lost it completely. I’m sharing my story to give you hope. If I can transform pain into beauty through emotional alchemy, you can, too.

    I’m 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, it is so very worth it. Here’s how I perform emotional alchemy, and you can, too.

    My “Shawshank” Moment

    Although I didn’t always recognize how childhood trauma led to my adult victimization, I now see how it created the conditions. My inner child wasn’t only wounded; I, in many ways, was still a child.

    I grew up in a household where anger was the primary emotion, and that seed remained within me. When an adult tragedy struck, I watered it, first directing it at a world I felt was impossibly cruel and finally against myself.

    The seed sprouted when I became chronically ill with disabling symptoms that gradually robbed me of my ability to work a traditional job. I lost everything, including my home.

    Because I had never learned how to relate to others, I didn’t know where to turn for help and was convinced that I would be ridiculed for asking. Having never learned how to set appropriate boundaries as a child, I pushed away the few people who tried to lend a hand, suspecting ulterior motives.

    Accepting assistance was burdening another, something strong, capable, worthy people didn’t do, and the people who offered aid had something up their sleeves.

    Homeless and feeling utterly powerless, I had no idea how to go on.

    Getting Busy Living

    Anger was useful in my recovery. It took well over a decade to find a diagnosis—an underlying heart defect.

    I now know that my emotional outbursts at the doctor’s corresponded to one of my biggest complex post-traumatic stress disorder (c-PTSD) triggers. As a child, I was constantly invalidated and dismissed, including when I had health issues.

    Any time I got sick, I was told it was a “cry for attention” and an attempt to “manipulate” my parents into caring for me. Experiencing similar suspicion again led to irritation and many tears that no doubt confirmed my provider’s impression of me as “hysterical.”

    My anger drove me to prove I was not causing my symptoms, exacerbating them, or making them up. But how? I went utterly straight-edge, taking up a super-healthy, nearly monastic lifestyle of whole foods intended to nurture physical and mental health, regular physical activity, and all the brain-and-soul healing holistic therapies I could find online.

    Little did I know I was laying the foundation of my recovery. Although people tend to think linearly, as though one thing leads to another like a straight line, existence is more like a circular mandala with interwoven threads creating the tapestry and holding that giant parachute together. When one thread wears thin, the others pick up the slack during repairs. My work on my physical body began to heal my mind. But how?

    1. Diet and Mental State

    My diet today still consists primarily of plant-based foods close to their natural forms. I also take care to increase my intake of certain nutrients necessary for brain health through the meals I choose, such as:

    • B-vitamins for neurotransmitter production.
    • Omega-3s to prevent brain disorders and improve mood.
    • Magnesium, selenium, and zinc for improved mood and nervous system regulation.

    I also eliminated anything that could adversely affect my mood. That meant cutting out:

    • Foods with artificial colors, flavors, and preservatives.
    • Added sugar.
    • Processed, bleached flour.
    • Unhealthy oils.

    It’s tougher to eat this way on a budget. I stocked up on dried fruits, nuts, and seeds that last; inexpensive tuna; and fresh, organic produce from the farmer’s market.

    2. Movement and the Full Nervous System

    While most of your neurons are in your brain, you have them all over your body. Emotional trauma can get trapped in your somatic system, but nurturing practices like Yin and restorative yoga can release it.

    I find it’s best to get my heart pumping to burn off some of those excess stress hormones like cortisol before I can dig into deeper release on the mat. Find movement that soothes you, which can include pumping you up to blow off steam.

    My yoga mat has become a true home for me. It’s where I go to sit, or passively stretch, with my emotions when they overwhelm me. If you have c-PTSD, you know that your triggers don’t disappear — you train yourself to notice them and react to them less so that they don’t control you. Sometimes, that means creating a necessary pause before responding, and my yoga mat is my place to do that.

    3. Mindfulness

    Mindfulness is the true key to transforming pain into power through emotional alchemy. I’m convinced it’s the one tool that can help with the epidemic of narcissism American society faces—and I speak as someone who learned such traits from the dubious “best.” People with such personalities have defenses so sky-high that they react to even the most well-intended advice with distrust.

    However, mindfulness creates space for deep truths to bubble up from inside. You aren’t being “lectured” by someone else who threatens your sense of self and the worldview that protects you. Simply focusing on your inhales and exhales provides a sense of separation and objectiveness that lets you realize two critical truths:

    • You are not your thoughts.
    • You are not your feelings.

    You have thoughts and feelings, but you also have the you that’s sitting with them on the mat, deciding how to best manage them. Recognizing that you have power and choice over how you direct your energy teaches you that if you want anger or distrust to grow, you water those seeds through your actions and decisions.

    The beautiful part? You also realize if you want to nurture love, hope, health, camaraderie, faith, optimism, joy, and happiness, then you water those seeds.

    One small act of goodness can start a ripple effect. Think of it like the frayed strands of a worn tapestry weaving themselves back together, one string at a time. It starts with self-love.

    I didn’t fully realize when I began my journey that I was essentially reparenting myself from scratch, but that’s what I was doing. My higher self was acting like a good mother, ensuring I had healthy foods, the right amount of exercise and sunlight, and plenty of nurturing.

    Creating Emotional Alchemy

    Mindfulness also helped me manage the overwhelming anxiety I felt without my usual coping mechanisms to handle stress. Anyone who has experienced morning-after hangxiety knows that withdrawal from alcohol ramps up this emotion, and my life stressors hadn’t magically disappeared. I was still battling housing insecurity, trying to earn enough money to keep a roof over my head while managing necessary medical appointments and the associated travel time.

    However, I couldn’t have transformed my pain into power through emotional alchemy without identifying my feelings and learning how to manage them in healthy ways. For that, I dug into everything I could learn about human psychology. I engaged in therapy whenever possible. Although there was limited help available, I briefly found someone who listened to me rehash my childhood without judgment.

    Mostly, though, I self-directed my treatment, making use of the resources I had available. I engaged in the following practices, often more than once per day, to slowly heal my central nervous system. These activities decreased my emotional reactivity and helped me make wiser choices based on mindful contemplation instead of a panicked need to do something, anything:

    • Yoga: Not all styles require high energy or physical fitness, and many poses have modifications for differing skill and mobility levels. Try Hatha, Yin, or restorative if you’re new.
    • Meditation: While there are many styles, I find that guided meditations are best for beginners. They acclimate you to sitting quietly with your thoughts while providing just enough direction to prevent falling into a rumination trap or taking a dark trip down anxiety lane.
    • Nature walks: Oodles of studies show nature’s healing power on your body and mind. Hike, or better yet, go camping. It’s free or close to it.
    • Grounding: Grounding or earthing puts your skin in contact with the earth’s natural magnetic field. While it sounds new age, it works.
    • Nutrition: Although I give myself more dietary leeway today, my meals are still primarily plant-based. I continue to avoid unhealthy substances, including alcohol, knowing what it does to my neurotransmitters.
    • Learning: Educational materials and online support groups are invaluable resources.

    I’m not a celebrity and certainly not among the elite. However, my message of hope is that you don’t necessarily need an expensive retreat or inpatient care to transform pain into power through emotional alchemy.

    Use what you have. YouTube is a fabulous resource of free nutrition and exercise videos, and the internet abounds with information. It’s a matter of feeding yourself the right input instead of getting sucked into social media. Seek websites and channels by credentialed individuals to ensure the information you receive is accurate and helpful.

    Emotional Alchemy: Transforming Pain into a Beautiful Life

    Today, my life continues to improve. Working on myself made it much easier to get the other pieces of my life under control.

    It might take reparenting yourself if you have severe c-PTSD. You might have to actively decide to stop doing the things that hurt your mind, body, and emotions and start nurturing yourself like you would a child. However, over time, you can create emotional alchemy and transform your pain into power, sharing what you have learned in your journey to bring hope to others.

  • How Our Emotional Triggers Can Actually Be Great Gifts

    How Our Emotional Triggers Can Actually Be Great Gifts

    “Be grateful for triggers, they point to where you are not free.” ~Unknown

    Your triggers are your responsibility. I know, it doesn’t land so nicely, does it? But it’s the truth. The moment you truly understand this, you let others off the hook and you’re able to actually see triggers as gifts pointing to where you’re not whole.

    I’ve heard this many times before and felt like retorting with, “But, he/she/they did….” Just because your triggers are your responsibility doesn’t mean that others won’t do hurtful or infuriating things. It just means the only thing you can control is your side of the street. EVER. That’s it.

    Recently, I was out of town and my husband stayed home with our two younger children. I was at my oldest daughter’s softball game when he texted pictures of sushi and asked me to guess where they were. I could tell right away. It was a restaurant near our old house that we used to go often that had shut down during the pandemic.

    I found myself so triggered by the mere memory of it that I responded with, “I remember THAT place quite well.”

    That’s the place we ran into someone my husband knew. Someone I would eventually dislike, maybe even momentarily hate. Someone who years after this innocent run-in would, along with my husband, participate in causing me great hurt.

    It stung, the blindness of it all, the complete disregard for my feelings just as if it had happened yesterday and not close to a decade ago. Interesting how this was the image in my mind’s eye and not the dozens of other times we enjoyed sushi as a family.

    My husband then proceeded to tell me they had reopened and the kids were enjoying themselves. Well, here I was, triggered, feeling this anger rising from my gut and moving into my heart, and they were stuffing their faces with sushi. How nice. I wondered if he even knew, if he had picked up on that sly remark. Did he even remember? Could he sense the change of energy from afar?

    Normally, when I’m triggered, I will lash out, say something snarky, and maybe say or do something that would only lead to a fight. He would absolutely know I was triggered, and I would graciously remind him it was hisfault.

    This time, I walked myself off the ledge, reminded myself that my trigger is my responsibility, took a breath, and made a mental note to dig in at a later time. For the time being I would sit and watch softball and shove this firecracker of a trigger to the side. It seems silly that a sushi restaurant could trigger so much underlying anger, but let me tell you, it did.

    The following day I took the four-hour drive home. I had two teenagers in the car with ear pods in their ears and their faces glued to their phones. This was the perfect time to dig in, as there was nothing but road ahead of me and time to kill.

    I started a mental conversation with myself about this trigger, the same process I would undertake with a client in this same predicament. What about this place was so triggering?

    The memory of being in the restaurant and running into this person flashed in my mind’s eye. There was a back and forth of questions and answers, like a ping pong match happening inside of my head. The mind asking away and the answers rising up from below.

    I peeled layer after layer, until I found myself at the bottom of the dark well, the root of it all, “It’s my fault. It’s my fault I trusted someone enough to hurt me.”

    There it was, this decades old root that had enough charge to take down an entire city, enough charge to strike back and hurt someone deeply when provoked. The present moment so tightly wound in a much deeper, far more ancient wound.

    Aah, it was never about the sushi, never about what anyone else did or didn’t do; it was only ever about me. It was only ever about this false belief that was wrapped in responsibility and armored with guilt and shame. The map is absolutely not the territory.

    Tears streamed down my face. I tried to hide them behind my sunglasses and keep my composure in the silence of the car. I grabbed from the stack of Chipotle napkins in the center console (I know I’m not the only one), dabbed my face, and blotted my nostrils.

    The tears kept coming; they were the release of trapped emotion and relief. They were the realization of the amount of ownership and responsibility for the actions of others that I had decided to take so long ago in order to self-protect.

    When someone’s actions hurt me in either benign or malignant ways, I blamed myself for not having armored up enough to prevent the “attack” from happening in the first place. I should have known and done better, but I hadn’t and, hence the trigger, the subconscious reminder of the pain and shame. It’s unrealistic; there’s no amount of armor one can wear to prevent themselves from ever getting hurt by someone else.

    Our triggers are our responsibility. They point to where we are not whole, where we are wounded, and if we have the courage to unravel them, we find liberation. Our liberation. We find the truth beyond the story or the incident.

    It’s not easy to let others off the hook. It’s not easy to turn the tables on ourselves, to ask what is this bringing up in me? What belief lies buried deep in the unconscious yet, ultimately, has immense control in my life? Oftentimes, it something painful we’ve kept ourselves from looking at—something we, more than likely, have no consciousness around.

    Triggers are a gift only if you have the courage to unravel the tight hold they have on you, only if you choose to uproot the belief that holds the charge. Awareness is everything.

    What I now know is that if I ever hear this restaurant mentioned or brought up again, I won’t be triggered in the same way I was that day on the softball field. The charge will have dissipated. I would know that I am only ever responsible for my circus and my monkeys, not the hurtful actions of others.

    I am also aware this process isn’t a one and done. It may take continual reminders until the trigger ceases to carry any charge at all. Healing, after all, is a journey and a process.

    So, next time you find yourself triggered, I invite you to stop, take a breath, and ask yourself a series of “why” questions followed by “because” statements to see if you can’t get to the root of it all, which is where you’ll find your gift.

  • 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.

  • How to Free Yourself from Pain from the Past

    How to Free Yourself from Pain from the Past

    “There 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.” ~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.

    How many of us have gone through a divorce and realized in the process that the whole relationship was a repeat of a painful relationship from our childhood? How many of us are realizing that we continue to attract the same kinds of people into our lives? People who take advantage of us, want to use us, or have some form of agenda that creates more pain and suffering.

    We live in our minds trying to think of all the ways we can protect ourselves and avoid more pain and suffering. The irony is that this inevitably creates more of what we are trying to avoid. This is because what we focus on, we create. The law of attraction is always at play.

    For years, I lived highly dependent on my mind. I thought that if I got all the psychology degrees, considered all possible future outcomes, and created a well-thought-out plan of action, I would be able to fix my pain and suffering and free myself for a life of meaning and purpose.

    It was devastating to realize after years of chasing a meaningful life that I could not create safety, joy, and purpose through the actions of my mind.

    Subconsciously, I stayed trapped in cycles of pain while trying to resolve my past by hoping the people around me would change. I kept my life small so I could stay in control. I never wanted to be around crowds of people. I never wanted to share and be vulnerable, and I never wanted to let anyone see my feelings. I stayed hidden away behind my mind, where I felt in control and safe.

    But I also felt miserable. Empty and purposeless. For a while, I was suicidal.

    Thankfully, I left those feelings behind years ago, but the emptiness of going through the motions of life without a true connection to what I was doing or why I was here remained, and it was maddening.

    I have found that more people feel this emptiness than anyone would ever think. Many of us keep it hidden in the silence of shame because we desperately want it to be fixed and go away. It’s embarrassing to admit that we feel broken and sad behind all the layers of achievement and pretty social media posts.

    We attempt to fill this emptiness with eating, drinking, scrolling, having sex, shopping, collecting things, and so on. So many of us are terrified at the thought of spending a whole day, much less a whole lifetime, being alone with ourselves. Being with ourselves with no distractions.

    The thoughts in our mind haunt us. We torture ourselves with memories from the past and worries for the future. We torture ourselves with thoughts of how disappointed we are in how our lives have turned out. We recreate pain from the past over and over again by dwelling on the twisted and tormented thoughts in our minds and feel that life is unfair.

    Many people will tell you the answer is praying, reading the bible, going to a therapist, reading self-help books, or doing something with your mind. None of these things are bad in and of themselves, but no amount of staying in your mind will fix or heal the pain of your past that you continue to repeat in the present.

    Unresolved emotions of the past are stored in our bodies, and they’re in the driver’s seat of our lives, causing chaos, disappointment, and frustration everywhere we go.

    I used to think I was really bad at making friends. I usually would wait until someone approached me before striking up a friendship. I isolated a lot because it just felt safer and easier. Over time, I got frustrated because I realized that I kept ending up in these friendships with people who never really saw me.

    My pain and fear of rejection was in the driver’s seat, so I protected myself by keeping the real me hidden away. If I caught anyone’s attention, I would play the role I thought I needed to play to be friends.

    The biggest problem here is that this attracted other people who also played roles instead of being their authentic selves. The role they played was “take care of me,” while I was playing the role of “I’ll take care of you.” This match worked well initially, but always left me in the same broken pattern of not being truly seen. That empty crater in my soul just kept getting bigger and bigger.

    The only way to stop the cycle of pain is to become fully present with yourself here and now. To connect to your body and the spirit within you that is ever present.

    When you drop into your body and feel your emotions, you are then free to just be. So many of us are terrified of the silence of being with ourselves because the pain of the past combined with our present actions to distract ourselves haunt us. The secrets we hold inside are killing us.

    You aren’t a bad person for the things you do to find some form of pain relief. Life isn’t about being a good or bad person. It is about being authentic, real, and connected, or disconnected and fragmented because of the cycles of pain on repeat.

    Are you tired of the constant disappointment? Are you tired of hating yourself and your life? Are you tired of feeling like you are always behind, not quite enough, and devastatingly empty inside? It is so painful, isn’t it? It is so painful to feel the destruction and pain of the disconnection to our true selves. It is painful to face the things we do to distract ourselves from the reality of our emptiness.

    Healing happens in the body. Pain is released from your body. Get out of your mind and into your body and you will be set free. You will experience peace and joy. You will stop the cycles of pain and be at peace with the present moment just as it is. 

    I know it feels impossibly hard. There is so much chaos swirling around in your body that it feels dangerous to actually feel your feelings. A great quote from my mentor, Colin Ross, helped set me free. “Feeling your feelings won’t kill you; it’s your attempt to not feel them that will.”

    It is uncomfortable, it is painful, it can be overwhelming at times, but feeling your feelings will set you free.

    Here is a place to start: Play some music that brings you comfort and close your eyes. Pretend you are getting in a glass elevator in your mind and ride it down into your body. Once the elevator has arrived in your body, identify the emotions you find. Write them down.

    Lower the elevator a little more and see if different emotions are in a different part of your body. Explore your whole body and write down everything you discover.

    For the days to come, spend some time with each of those emotions and ask them what they have to say. Give each emotion a name if it’s easier. Once you feel more comfortable with an emotion, you will feel safer to actually feel it. 

    For example, when I ride my elevator down into my chest, I can see anger. I named my anger Carrie. In my journaling time I ask Carrie, what do you have to say? She tells me all the reasons why she is angry and feels that life is unfair.

    She tells me about my former marriage and how much I was taken advantage of. She reminds me of all the times he silenced me when I tried to share my needs and shamed me when I tried to speak up for myself.

    She tells me about how enraged she feels that I never had a voice growing up. I was sexually abused and emotionally neglected, and if I expressed any emotion other than happiness, I was shamed and rejected by my family and culture. She is so angry for the “good girl” roles I had to play while never really being seen or valued.

    As I get to know her and hear all of these things she has to say, I feel compassion for her and also start to feel anger along with her myself. Each time I connect with her, I validate why she is angry. The intensity of her emotion gets smaller and smaller the more I connect with her and feel her.

    You can do this exercise with all emotions, and it can help you get to know yourself and not be so scared of what is contained inside. 

    When neither your past nor your emotions haunt you, you are free to love your life in the present moment just as it is. Flawed, imperfect, messy, and unpredictable.

    Now that I’m not scared of feeling my emotions, I am at peace. Sometimes I still need to grieve the truth of what has happened to me. I will never be okay with the abuse and neglect I experienced. However, I can feel those emotions when they come up, and they don’t overwhelm me. I feel them for that moment, and then I can move on to enjoy the life I have created now. A life that has people who really see me and care about me in it.

    Perhaps the biggest change for me is that I don’t feel I have to prove my worth to anyone. I am just me, and I feel at peace with that. This shift has allowed me to get out of my head and just be.

    We don’t need to dwell on the past or control how our life looks or what will happen next. We can just be here in the present, full of gratitude, hope, love, joy, and all the messiness from the past lives we have lived.

  • 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.

  • How to Release the Fear That Keeps Our Lives Small

    How to Release the Fear That Keeps Our Lives Small

    “Being cut off from our own natural self-compassion is one of the greatest impairments we can suffer.” ~Gabor Mate

    It was late at night, and I couldn’t 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 didn’t 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 me, feeling so much like I couldn’t reach him to build a connection again. It was work and the state of my health. I was eating too much, always unexercised, ever stressed.

    And I could feel that night the icy fear that liked to crawl up my spine and fill me with abject horror.

    I just wanted my life to change in so many ways, so I could rid myself of this fear and be over it already.

    After this night, and the hundreds of other nights like it where I lay awake unable to sleep, feeling so very bad about my life, I learned something very important. That the fear that existed inside of me was actually very, very old, and it was the same fear that was simply playing on repeat, over all my life. Instead of dealing with the hundreds of things that scared me, I had to go to the source of the fear.

    Fear had embedded itself into my bones at an early age, passed on from my parents, and exacerbated by terrifying experiences that I’d had. And it had stayed locked in my body like a confined animal lying in wait, because I had never received enough emotional safety to allow it to release from my body.

    Oh, how I hated this fear.

    The list of things I was terrified about was overwhelming, and it filled me with such deep shame about who I was now—a grown adult with children, a business, and a husband. That I could be someone who was almost afraid of their own shadow repulsed me.

    When I reflect back and think now about that woman, that poor, terrified woman, looking out at the world and feeling so alone in her fear, I feel so much sadness. Not so much about how scared I was—I understand now why I had so much fear in my body and why it stayed there—but because I felt so much shame for feeling that way.

    It was like a double whammy of emotional pain—fear in itself is a big, hard, tough emotion to experience day in and day out. And it requires compassion and understanding. Adding deep feelings of shame that, somehow, I was wrong to feel like this, made the fear so much harder to handle.

    I yearn to scoop up that woman and hold her and say, “It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”

    What made the difference to that woman lying in perpetual fear and to the woman I am now was that I learned about how emotions actually work. And I learned how to work with emotions so they didn’t stay trapped inside my body, growing ever bigger by the decade, creating a life that kept getting smaller as the fear seemed to have seeped out and tainted so much of it.

    I no longer have a growing list of things that scare me. In fact, I have an ever-shortening list of things that scare me, as I have learned how to not just work with the emotion of fear in the present, but to release the gigantic weight of the past fear that I had been carrying.

    Decades of fear that had stayed in my body, unable to release and coloring my world view so dramatically.

    What really helped me make a huge shift was when I learned to support myself through feeling the emotion of fear. To build a feeling of safety to hold these feelings in my body. To allow them, the sensations they create, in order to be fully present. Feel them and then they have the chance to release.

    And this is because our emotions want to be seen, felt, and heard. It may sound illogical, but just because we are feeling emotional doesn’t mean we are actually feeling our feelings.

    Most of us, to be honest, are resisting our feelings—trying to move away from them as fast as possible, thinking our way out of them, trying to talk our way out of our feelings or fix the situation/our lives/the people we feel are to blame.

    We aren’t accepting them, welcoming them, and allowing them—which is what our emotions want.

    When emotions arise, the first thing we need to do, instead of staying on the runaway train of thoughts—the endless cascade of thoughts that all humans have all of the time—is move our attention to our bodies.

    We notice: How is the emotion showing up in my body?

    What does it look like or feel like?

    What sensations am I noticing? Heat, heaviness, tension, constriction?

    And when we notice the sensations, maybe the sensations get stronger. I like to think of it like it’s relieved that, finally, we are paying attention to it.

    When we aren’t used to paying attention and staying with the sensations of, say, fiery anger or nauseating fear, it can feel like a lot. So we want to be gentle with ourselves, taking baby steps to learn how to tolerate the sensations the feeling is creating in our body. Taking tiny sips of the emotion until we can hold more.

    Emotions love to be met with empathy and understanding, so this is my next step. For many of us we have gotten so used to feeling aggrieved or scared by our feelings that we will feel judgment about the feeling being here.

    I shouldn’t feel like this!
    What’s wrong with me that I get so angry / sad / scared all the time?
    Why can’t I just stop feeling so ashamed?!

    So, if that’s you, if you load on judgment when you notice your feelings, try this instead.

    Offer a pause and some empathy.

    Oh, look, fear is here. That’s a tough one for me.
    It makes sense that I feel like this.
    It’s hard to be with this emotion, but I am going to support myself to feel this.

    We can then see what happens when we turn toward that feeling with an attitude of acceptance, understanding, and empathy. How does it respond? What does it feel like to be allowed to have that feeling in your body?

    All emotions are natural. All emotions are valid. What makes us human and able to live such rich and rewarding lives and relationships is that we have feelings. When we learn how to fully feel our emotions, we get to become aware of their purpose, their ability to guide us to living and being more authentic in our lives.

    Most of us don’t know how to be with the sensations our feelings create, so we get tangled up in how badly we feel about them.

    Now, we don’t want to pour our feelings onto people; we don’t want to shout or scare people. But we do want to fully acknowledge our feelings with compassion.

    When we can be curious about how we feel, it helps us open up to the possibilities of supporting ourselves through the feelings we are having. And when we offer ourselves compassion, it helps us develop a more trusting, loving, and gentle relationship with ourselves.

    Instead of trying to push through or ignore our feelings, when we turn toward them with compassion and empathy, it actually helps us to move through the feeling so much faster.

    Once the feeling has been fully felt, when we’ve been able to stay with the sensations that it creates, it will then release.

    And when we’ve released that feeling from our body, wow, we feel so much lighter, calmer, with a renewed sense of possibility.

    As an added bonus, once our feelings have been seen, felt, and heard, we get to access the part of us that is awesomely productive. The part that’s great at coming up with ideas and solutions, feels confident, and enjoys life. And we have a lot more energy.

    When we are able to be with our feelings, understand them, hold them with a feeling of safety and possibility in our body—and once we start doing this over and over again—this is where we get to reduce the amount of fear we hold in our body. And wow, that is a beautiful sensation!

  • 7 Steps to Deconstruct Your Anger So It No Longer Controls You

    7 Steps to Deconstruct Your Anger So It No Longer Controls You

    “Holding 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.” ~Buddha

    For as long as I can remember I’ve 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 me—either nothing or anger.

    I was the quiet, reserved kid, keeping my emotions locked away. I buried my feelings, especially the touchy ones, trying to hide any expression of vulnerability. Not knowing what to do with my feelings other than ignore them.

    It was obvious to the teachers that paid attention and cared that I was hurting, and my anger showed it, but I didn’t know it. I was sarcastic and had an edge to the way I talked and interacted with others. One day, while standing in line to leave the classroom, I got bumped from behind, and without hesitation, I turned around and punched the kid behind me to the floor.

    As I went through my twenties trying to figure who I was and what my place in this world could be, anger spewed out of me at unexpected and awkward times. It confused others, but it was all normal to me.

    It wasn’t until I got fired from a job because I was too confrontational toward the owner that I started to see my anger as more about me than others or my circumstances.

    One of my favorite sayings that best describes my view of my anger back then is, “I don’t need anger management. I need people to stop pissing me off!”

    Acknowledging my problem with anger wasn’t easy. It required admitting shortcomings and facing deeper issues within myself, something I’d worked years to avoid. But I finally realized and accepted that my future relationships, happiness, and mental health depended upon understanding and resolving those feelings and beliefs.

    My First Step in Healing – Not as Easy as I’d Hoped

    The journey toward healing started with self-reflection and seeking support. Ironically, this journey to understand myself began as I was completing my undergraduate degree in psychology.

    I found a psychologist to help me unravel the complex emotions I’d been suppressing for so many years. I’ll admit, I was hoping he’d give me a few quick tips and tricks to keep my anger under control and send me on my way.

    No such luck.

    He explained that to truly resolve anger issues, I had to:

    • Deconstruct my anger response
    • Create a healthy framework for processing my feelings
    • Learn new methods for communicating and expressing emotions

    The process wasn’t as quick and easy as I’d wanted.

    What It Looks Like to Deconstruct Your Anger

    Deconstructing your anger means breaking apart and examining the elements that have created it.

    The process requires analyzing and understanding the underlying factors, triggers, and emotions contributing to your anger and its eruptions. Although it takes work and a hard look at some ugly parts of yourself, doing this leads to the effective management of all emotions, which is an essential skill for happiness.

    The key steps for deconstructing your anger are:

    1. Evaluating past experiences

    Past experiences and traumas contribute to how you respond to certain situations and influence the formation of anger. Reflecting on these experiences can help you recognize patterns and triggers.

    For me, it was the influence of my father. He was both emotionally disconnected from our family and blisteringly angry. Any response could be cold or hot, or simultaneously both.

    Unknowingly, like every kid, I was psychologically influenced by him. And although I would have told you I wasn’t going to be anything like him, it turned out that I followed in his footsteps (until my thirties when I began to really do this work).

    2. Understanding your emotions

    Anger is a complex emotion that often masks other feelings. Fear, sadness, frustration, and hurt are all difficult feelings to face. For many, including me, it was easier to get angry than deal with the intensity of these feelings I didn’t know how to face or process.

    These emotions also created feelings of vulnerability and weakness in me that I didn’t want to see, experience, or admit to. And I certainly didn’t want to show them to anyone else.

    But examining these underlying emotions is a necessity for understanding anger and learning how to lessen and control it.

    3. Identifying your triggers 

    Everyone has things that trigger a seemingly automatic emotional response. Identifying triggers, the emotion that follows a trigger, and how your anger rescues that emotion is crucial.

    Triggers can be external (e.g., someone’s actions, words, situations, or events) or internal (e.g., negative thoughts or memories).

    When I looked closely, I discovered that most of my triggers involved my expectations of others. One such expectation is rule following—doesn’t everybody know you don’t drive slow in the fast lane? Or that you treat others the way you want to be treated?

    4. Analyzing responsive thoughts

    Most of us have reinforced certain thought patterns. And these thoughts significantly influence our emotions and emotional response. Deconstructing anger involves examining these thoughts and the resulting emotions that fuel your anger.

    For instance, are you jumping to conclusions, catastrophizing, or personalizing situations? If so, your emotional response may be disproportionate or even inappropriate for the situation.

    I began to understand that my expectations led me to make assumptions about others that were incorrect. If you look in the rearview mirror when driving and think about how your speed is impacting other drivers, you’d move to the right, but some people don’t use their mirrors and aren’t aware of what’s going on around them. They should, but they don’t.

    Changing my expectation that everyone drives like me helped me reduce the buildup of anger.

    5. Assessing responsive behavior

    Responsive thoughts often initiate responsive emotions and behaviors, such as getting angry. By examining your behavioral responses and how they impact your relationships, and others in general, you’ll better understand why it’s helpful to consider new and healthier alternatives. 

    I realized that my inclination toward aggressive driving was a result of my anger at others for not following the “rules,” and this was only fueling more anger and negatively impacting me, not changing anyone else.

    6. Exploring new coping mechanisms

    If you’re struggling with anger issues, your current coping mechanisms for the deep emotions that trigger anger aren’t working. You need to find more constructive ways to respond to and express your feelings. Doing so will help break the negative thought-behavior cycle.

    Part of my process was to write down what triggered me, along with my responsive thoughts and behaviors. Looking at them on paper and away from the emotion of the moment allowed me to see them accurately as unhelpful and unhealthy for me.

    I could then write out a more balanced and healthier response. Once on paper, I would practice those more positive responses, and then weekly look back and reread what I’d originally written and my new better coping response to assess my progress.

    7. Setting boundaries and prioritizing self-care

    Recognizing your limits and establishing healthy boundaries will help prevent you from being drawn into situations that trigger anger. It’s also critical to prioritize self-care to ensure that you have the emotional resources to handle challenging situations.

    One of the more effective practices for me is walking away for a few minutes when I feel my frustration or anger rising. By removing myself from a triggering situation I am better able to refocus more on myself internally and less on the external situation.

    These steps aren’t an overnight fix and really need to become a life-long practice. But by following these steps to deconstruct your own anger you’ll gain self-awareness and emotional intelligence that can empower you to respond to difficult emotions more constructively.

    The Transformative Result of Deconstructing My Anger

    As I worked through these steps, I was able to develop and incorporate new ways to cope with my emotions.

    This path of personal growth coincided with my pursuit of multiple degrees in psychology. So, as I learned how to help others change, I was able to first help myself change. Now I’m the doctor giving the advice, which comes from years of training as well as my own personal experience.

    Mindfulness and internal reflection have allowed me to respond to my feelings with greater emotional intelligence. I’ve learned to recognize my triggers and the warning signs of building anger in the moment and implement calming techniques as a response before an eruption.

    But perhaps the most profound transformation came from learning to show kindness and compassion toward myself. I am now able to acknowledge my mistakes, forgive myself, accept that I am a work in progress, and recognize the need for regular emotional check-ins with myself.

    Deconstructing my anger has opened the door to my being more understanding and patient with others. The process has also helped me better empathize with my patients, as I’ve sat where they sit and done the work I recommend they do too.

    I still feel anger at times—it’s a natural emotion, and it can be beneficial in certain situations. I will always be more prone to it than others. But anger doesn’t control my life or negatively impact my relationships any longer.

    My journey toward addressing my anger issues has been long and challenging, but it’s also been profound and life-changing. We all carry burdens, and we heal and grow through acknowledging and addressing them.

    Deconstructing your anger can be a transformative process, empowering you to understand your emotions better and respond to them more effectively. Remember, although anger is a natural part of being human, how you choose to manage it determines its impact on your life and the lives of others around you.

  • How to Stop Feeling Overwhelmed by Other People’s Strong Emotions

    How to Stop Feeling Overwhelmed by Other People’s Strong Emotions

    “It is not your responsibility to figure out what someone else is feeling and why. Let go of the illusion that ‘fixing’ their bad mood will make you feel better.” ~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. 

    This was a familiar and old pattern for me. My husband had some feelings and expressed them, and I felt totally overwhelmed by them. It then created a loop of reactivity where he would say something in this annoyance, I would respond with fear that he was annoyed, and it would all become a big mess of emotions being thrown all over the place.

    But what felt worse than that moment, when I experienced his feelings as though they were the end of the world, is what came after. I would sink into a familiar space of despair about my husband and how he was feeling. I would try and think of ways to fix the situation, or feel aggrieved by how he’d reacted.

    This response is something that I experienced not just with my husband, but with most people in my life to a greater or lesser degree. My real or imagined noticing of someone having feelings, and how horrible that felt for me, in my body.

    It was totally instinctive, that someone would seem upset and I would jump in and try to fix, reassure, help, or soothe. And in that process, I would totally subjugate my needs and feelings because of how much I didn’t like how it felt to be around people and their emotions. 

    Sometimes it would feel that people close to me were trying to upset me with their emotions on purpose. When a family member got angry it would totally overwhelm me, and I would end up resenting them for days or weeks. It felt like they were punishing me with their anger.

    When my kids felt disappointment or sadness, I found it unbearable to see them feeling so bad, and I would endeavor to help them by changing their plans, getting them a cookie, or trying to talk them out of how they were feeling.

    The problem here is that, of course, when we are human beings around other human beings, we are going to encounter people having feelings—about us or themselves, or anything else we humans have feelings about.

    When we find other people’s feelings challenging, we aren’t giving them the space they need to have feelings. There is an element of Your feelings are making me uncomfortable! Can you please shut them down because I don’t like them.

    Which is understandable when we don’t know how to deal with our own emotions. If we don’t feel okay around our feelings, of course we struggle with other people’s.

    So how do we learn how to not get intertwined with other people and their emotions? How do we stop having such intense reactions to people having feelings, regardless of what they are about?

    How can we stop letting other people’s emotional responses completely distract us, and throw us off our day—consuming vast amounts of time and activating intensely uncomfortable feelings of our own?

    For me, the first step was learning how to identify what was happening. I felt like other people’s feelings were happening to me, but really, they were having feelings and I was having feelings.

    My feelings are separate from your feelings. 

    One of the reasons why it feels that we get so intertwined and things get so messy in relationships is that we don’t recognize that we all have separate feelings. In so many relationships we don’t give each other space to have feelings, because of the patterns of how we respond to emotions.

    We often think it’s like this:

    Stop being scared! It’s making me scared!

    Stop being irritable! It’s making me anxious!

    But really no one is making us have feelings. Our emotions arise on their own, as do someone else’s. But we can learn how to stop reacting to their emotions as our own.

    If we can see Oh, I am having my own feelings here! we can then use this awareness to create some space and start to pay attention to ourselves and our emotions instead.

    Recognize that no one is having feelings on purpose.  

    Once I had been coaching for a few years and had radically changed how I worked with both my own emotions and how I responded to those of the other people around me, I asked my husband what he loved the most about my work. He said that now he no longer feels tortured by my feelings. And I thought, Wow! That is so fascinating.

    I was so used to feeling overwhelmed by his feelings that I never considered that he was feeling the same way.

    Because my emotional reactions are so different from his, it didn’t occur to me that he was also uncomfortable around my feelings. And it’s the difference in our responses that can provide so much confusion in relationships.

    My go-to strategy when overwhelmed by my husband’s emotions was to chase him down and try to discuss and fix everything straight away. His strategy was to try to disconnect from me and run away.

    Essentially, we both felt challenged by the other’s emotions, and by working to create some space to support ourselves in our own emotions, we created such a big shift in how we now respond to each other.

    People can’t be truly empathetic when they are emotionally activated. 

    What I now know about emotions is that we can’t truly access empathy when we are emotionally activated, so if I am with someone who is having feelings, I don’t expect empathy and understanding from them.

    In order to gain full access to our empathy, we need to move through the emotions, so part of working with other people is letting them move through the anger/fear/sadness or whatever it is they are feeling.

    I don’t engage them in things I am not happy about or talk about their behavior or what they’ve said—until after they have moved through that feeling.

    When we feel any emotion, we see the whole world through the lens of that emotion. Anger sees upsetting things everywhere. Fear sees scary things everywhere. So it doesn’t benefit us to get too involved in what someone might say when they are in the thick of emotional activation.

    Knowing this helps us work on not reacting to what they are saying, doing, or feeling.

    Feelings activate feelings.  

    If we are feeling super calm and someone comes along and is expressing a lot of anger, it can easily activate our own feelings. That’s natural. Maybe we feel fear around anger, or maybe we feel anger at their anger. It’s natural for our feelings to activate around others.

    With all emotions, we want to work on supporting ourselves through emotional activation. When we can do this, when we can sit with ourselves and provide support, we can move through the emotions with more ease and confidence, and not get stuck in the loop of that emotion.

    By noticing and naming your experience, you are offering yourself some support.

    We can say to ourselves, The best thing I can do right now is support myself in feeling my feelings, and not engage in their feelings. 

    We can acknowledge how challenging this is for us. We can offer ourselves the gift of understanding, and that can help us move with the discomfort of the emotions that have activated.

    Offer yourself some empathy, understanding, and validation.

    Empathy is a very powerful resource when we are in the thick of emotions. Giving ourselves some tender, kind, loving support is a real gift to ourselves when we feel activated.

    Maybe we say to ourselves:

    This is hard for me because…

    I understand why this is so challenging.

    It makes sense that this is tough for me since…

    It’s hard seeing someone feel so disappointed or angry. It’s hard to hold these feelings. 

    If it feels good, offer yourself some physical support.

    Put your hand on your heart, or stroke your arms, giving yourself a hug, while you stay with yourself in this experience of sitting with your feelings.

    Of course, this isn’t always easy! When we have spent a lifetime responding to people’s emotions in a certain way, it takes some effort and focus to start responding differently.

    Other people’s emotional activations are some of the hardest things we deal with, but with awareness and intention, we can learn to see these experiences differently, and then learn to respond differently.

    Now when I hear disappointment or irritation from my husband, or sadness or despair from my kids, or anger or shame from my family, I can recognize that these are their feelings! I don’t need to jump into their pool of emotions and get immersed in their experiences. 

    I can instead stand back and support myself, which in turn supports them because I am not adding to the emotional load they are experiencing.

    I can help by being responsible for my feelings so we aren’t creating a big chaotic mix of messy emotions.

    This is how anyone can create some space and peace in the emotional experiences around them.

  • How I Calm and Release Intense Emotions of Anger, Sadness, and Frustration

    How I Calm and Release Intense Emotions of Anger, Sadness, and Frustration

    “You don’t have to be positive all the time. It’s perfectly okay to feel sad, angry, annoyed, frustrated, scared, or anxious. Having feelings doesn’t make you a ‘negative person.’ It makes you human.” ~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.

    He’d go out with his friends to play pool, and I would immediately shut down, shut him out, and turn inward.

    Lying in bed, my thoughts would spiral out of control.

    What if he gets hurt?
    He’s a grown man playing pool; he’s not going to get hurt.

    Is he picking up other women?
    No. He loves me.

    Why didn’t he invite me?
    Having time to ourselves is something I value.

    We’re in a loving, committed relationship and have been together for four years, so why hasn’t he proposed?
    Wait, do I actually want to get married? Or has society just told me I want to get married?

    Why hasn’t he texted me?
    He’s being present with his friends. That is a good thing.

    What is wrong with me? Why am I being petulant, controlling, and jealous? Why can’t I support his time with friends like he does for me? On and on and on…

    Then the physical sensations would take over my body.

    I’d feel hot, my heart would beat quickly, and I wanted to escape my body. I’d have the urge to kick and scream and punch. I could not relax.

    I tried to quell my emotions and rely on the quiet, calm part of me to remedy the situation with my go-to tactics of meditating, focusing on breathing, and reading, but all of those failed miserably.

    I could not figure out why my usual calm, optimistic self, who is able to quickly pinpoint negative thoughts and change them, was not doing her job.

    My inability to understand what the hell was happening made me feel even more angry, frustrated, and helpless.

    So, through talk therapy, coaching, and journaling, I turned to my inner child, who I know wants to be seen, heard, and loved but who has erected walls to protect her heart.

    Communing with my inner child offered me a giant release and a few discoveries:

    In my relationship (and in my new business), I had a deep fear of abandonment and fear of the unknown.

    My fear of abandonment was being activated because my partner and I had just finished eighteen months of travel during which we were together most of the time. I grew comfortable in our little refuge, secluded from the rest of the world.

    And now, we were back in the real world, hanging out with people, adjusting to a new city and new jobs.

    I felt like we didn’t spend any time together anymore. I had expected him to propose during our year of travel, but he didn’t. I thought he was pulling away from me.

    The truth is, all of these were made-up stories in my head.

    In reality, we still spent a lot of time together, and we had gotten to know each other even more intimately and deeply during our year of travel. (And a proposal was right around the corner!) We were simply adjusting to a new way of living.

    I also started to realize that I was desiring to express a part of me that I had never expressed.

    The tears and physical discomfort were a sign that a part of me was being suppressed. Those parts that I was suppressing were the parts of me that I had been told were too much… too emotional, too loud, too big.

    I was taught that being stoic and quiet is a virtue.

    I was taught that showing emotions is a sign of weakness.

    I was taught that women are meant to be seen, not heard.

    I started to realize that it is actually a strength to express emotions and that I am worthy of taking up space.

    And I realized that my anger, frustration, and sadness could not be quelled and calmed through breathing and meditation; rather, I needed to become fortified in these intense emotions and express them in a healthy way.

    Three tactics I use to be fortified in the difficult emotions of anger, frustration, and sadness are:

    1. Shake it out. I bring my whole body into this and shake and stomp. It offers an instant release of tension.

    2. Yell it out. I go in my car, turn up some music, and yell until my vocal cords feel tired. Afterward, I always think, “Wow, that felt good.”

    3. Run it out. I never feel worse after a run, especially a run in the rain.

    Each of these tactics is of a physical nature, because sometimes, our emotions are simply energy that needs to be moved through the body. (I suggest pairing these three somatic practices with mindset work to understand and move through your beliefs, doubts, and fears. In other words, get into the body and the mind!)

    So, if you’re feeling intense emotions that you are unable to quell and calm, I invite you to match that emotional intensity with a healthy physical release.

    And please know that fear of abandonment in our relationships is totally normal (it’s a survival instinct, which might also be exacerbated by childhood trauma), so release the self-judgment and give yourself a little grace.

    (Also, I am happy to report that, at the time of writing, my fiancé is at his bachelor party, and I am one hundred percent not freaking out. Which is a result of therapy, mindset work, and somatic practice!)

    We get to explore what is going on and transmute that fear into a deeper love, more pleasure, and expanded intimacy.

    So here’s to getting to know and expressing your full, perfectly imperfect self!

  • Stop Catastrophizing: How to Retrain Your Brain to Stress and Worry Less

    Stop Catastrophizing: How to Retrain Your Brain to Stress and Worry Less

    “Don’t believe everything you think.” ~Unknown

    A couple of 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 doctor’s orders. The medical experts couldn’t 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 couldn’t help but catastrophize my future.

    What’ll happen if I can’t use the computer again? My whole career is based on computer work. 

    Will I ever be able to cook, clean, and drive like normal without pain?

    Do I have to give up my pole dancing hobby—a form of self-expression that I love so dearly?

    Shortly before my injury, I was preparing to change careers, and I was particularly excited about it. But worker’s compensation required me to stay put in my current job because I relied upon them to cover my medical expenses. I felt stuck, and I didn’t know how to get out.

    If you’re familiar with the slippery slope of catastrophizing, then you’re no stranger to how quickly you can get swept up in a thought that takes you down a dark tunnel. When you fixate on a problem and the worst possible outcome, it can feel viscerally real in your mind and body.

    There’s no mystery as to why any of us catastrophize. Perhaps you do it more than other people, but the truth is that our brains and nervous systems are evolved to keep us safe through protective measures, such as assuming the worst in order to prepare for it or to avoid taking risks altogether.

    If your brain judges a certain situation as potentially dangerous to your physical or social survival, it will not hesitate to activate the stress response in your amygdala, pumping the stress hormone cortisol throughout your body.

    Everyone’s brain also has a negativity bias, so it likes to err on the side of caution—in other words, you often experience more anxiety over a problem than is necessary or even helpful.

    When I was on disability, my nervous system downregulated my body into a depressive state, where I assumed nothing good was possible and I didn’t have to feel disappointed if the worst came true—which it never did.

    When you’re immersed in an anxiety episode, you have less access to the conscious, wise part of your brain that can solve problems. The biochemicals produced in your body generate more similar thoughts and feelings, which makes it easy to spiral into an even worse state of anxiety or depression. Your stories about yourself and the world become increasingly negative. It’s like the stress response is hijacking your brain and nervous system.

    Understanding how your brain functions when you’re engulfed in a catastrophizing episode is important for a couple of reasons.

    First of all, your body is doing what it knows to do best—mobilizing you to stay safe. The stress hormone helped us escape wild animals in our evolutionary past, but we’re not facing life-or-death situations anymore. The problem is that our brains haven’t updated to modern times.

    Once you know that your body is just trying to spin a doomsday story to protect you, then you can drop any beliefs you have about yourself—like “There must be something wrong with me for picturing such horrible possibilities!” Because there is nothing wrong with you.

    Secondly, the key to returning to reality and stopping the habit lies in your ability to reverse the stress response and regain control of your thinking brain, where you have clarity. Regulating your emotions and nervous system will biochemically allow you to change your stories and beliefs about yourself and the future. When you’re regulated, the narrative shifts into hope, possibility, and inspiration.

    How to Change Your Stories

    There is no shortage of somatic and mindfulness practices that regulate the nervous system, allowing you to reduce stress hormones and climb out of the non-existent future catastrophe.

    The first step is deciding you want to change.

    You have control over how you want to feel and what you want to do differently. If you’re ready to let go of catastrophizing your future, then the next step is to start noticing when you’re going down that old habit road. Catch yourself in the moment and try the following techniques to shift out of the problematic state so you can put an end to those unhelpful thoughts.

    Shift into Peripheral Vision

    If your inner dialogue is running rampant and you know it’s not serving you, peripheral vision is a great way to silence those thoughts immediately. Find a focal point in your room or the space around you. Without moving your eyes, soften your gaze like you’re diffusing your focus. Expand your awareness to all the space around that focal point. Continue to slowly expand out, as if you can almost see behind yourself. Try this for about twenty seconds. Shift back into focus and repeat at least once more.

    Palpating + Self-Touch

    Bring your palms together and start rubbing them one against another, creating some warmth and friction. Bring your full attention to your hands, noticing what you’re feeling in between your fingers and palms. Play with speed and pressure. Notice the temperature of your own hands. Maybe you even want to stretch the fingers back and forth.

    Do this for about thirty seconds, and then bring both hands to opposite shoulders, like you’re giving yourself a hug. Let both hands trace down your arms to the elbows in a sweeping motion. Then bring them back to the shoulders and back down again. Repeat for as long as it feels good.

    Build a Case for Possibilities

    As you build a practice of resourcing your body, get curious about what you’re moving through and moving toward. As you find moments of hope and possibility, write down what you’re excited about, looking forward to, and ready to change. Provide the written evidence to yourself that you know how to feel differently about your future. Remember this feeling, because you have control over finding your way back to it.

    Remember That Things Can Always Turn Around

    Recognize that your brain thinks anxiety will help you prepare for the worst, but that too much anxiety limits you. And remember that it’s possible things will turn out far better than you imagine.

    Challenge your own thoughts, and teach your mind how to imagine best-case scenarios instead of tragedies. What’s everything that could go right? This isn’t about hinging your happiness upon a narrowly defined marker of success, because no one knows how the future will unfold. Rather, consider that the future might pleasantly surprise you, so you can have a frame of mind that’ll make it easier to keep moving forward, pivot when needed, and develop resilience for the uncertainty of life.

    Your Brain is Paying Attention

    The incredible truth about interventional self-regulatory practices is that your brain is paying attention. In other words, it’s noticing that you’re cutting short an old habit and taking a turn down a new path. With repetition, this rewires the brain.

    Your brain is always learning, always picking up how you’re feeling and responding to the same old triggers and stressors. Thanks to neuroplasticity, your brain and nervous system are changing. Be tenacious about stopping the self-limiting patterns, and your body will have no other choice than to update.