Posts tagged with “feelings”

How Observing My Emotions Helps Me Let Go of Anger and Anxiety

“Even when in the midst of disturbance, the stillness of the mind can offer sanctuary.” ~Stephen Richards

One night my four-year-old daughter woke up crying, startling both me and my husband from sleep. He rushed into her room and I came in shortly thereafter, and I immediately got annoyed with how he was handling the situation. I’ll admit this now: I can’t even remember what he did, but in that moment I knew I would have done it differently and it made me feel irritable and angry.

I left the room and went into the bathroom. While I …

Why Your Positive Attitude Might Be Hurting You

By Ginelle Testa

“Positivity is a dogmatic insistence on turning away from what is painful.” ~Susan Piver, Wisdom of a Broken Heart

What if I told you there may be a flaw in positive thinking?

How could being positive possibly be unhelpful?

To some extent, positivity can be beneficial. In my life I’ve found optimism to be quite wonderful, crucial even.

Being around people who are generally positive is just far more pleasant than being around people who are constantly negative. Life seems a little bit more manageable when you can practice gratitude. Smiles are had and spirits are lifted with simple platitudes …

You Have to Feel it to Heal It: The Only Way Out is Through

By Hailey Magee

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

I plodded up the half-mile hill that led to my house, my backpack weighing heavily on my shoulders in the insistent summer heat. The mild breeze that drifted off the Boston harbor was a cruel joke, hinting at coolness but offering no respite.

Recently heartbroken, I felt tears streaming hotly down my cheeks for the third time that day as the pain of my ex-partner’s absence crashed swiftly on my heart.

I reached out to a trusted friend seeking solace. …

Why I Can’t Always Be the “Strong One” and What I Do Now Instead

By Lauren Marie Williams

“She was strong and weak and brave and broken… all at the same time.” ~Unknown

My mom was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder when I was seven years old. It’s a chronic condition that doctors say can be managed but not cured. The symptoms included manic high energy, depression, delusions, hearing voices, reduced need for sleep, and loss of touch with reality.

There were many times of stability for her, when she was on the right medication, taking it routinely, and attending regular psychotherapy. But if any of these elements were missing, those moments were often short-lived.

She was the …

How to Release Emotions Stuck in Your Body and Let Go of the Pain

By Joanna Ciolek

“The human mind is a relational and embodied process that regulates the flow of energy and information.” ~Daniel J. Siegel

We are emotional creatures, and we were born to express emotions freely and openly. Somewhere along the way, however, many of us learned to repress emotions, especially those deemed “negative,” in order to fit in, earn love, and be accepted. This was my experience.

I grew up in a home where the motto was “Children are to be seen, not heard.” There was little emotional expression allowed, let alone accepted. No one was there to validate or help us …

Stop Talking So You Can Start Feeling

By Michelle D'Avella

“Don’t hide from your feelings. Press into them. Learn from them. Grow from them.” ~Unknown

There have been times in my life when you could look at my cell phone call log and see back-to-back conversations for hours. I am blessed to have a large support system of loving friends and family, and there have been many times when that has saved me from facing my pain.

If you know anything about attachments styles or are one of millions who suffer from anxiety, you will relate when I tell you that I spent most of my life incredibly anxious. Most …

How I’ve Learned to Free Myself from Depression When It Hits

By James Leatherman

“No feeling is final.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke

I’ve battled depression for most of my life. In my younger years, it gripped me pretty frequently. I was first hit with suicidal thoughts at the age of fifteen, and it scared the bejesus out of me. I was young and dumb and had no idea what was happening.

When I was twenty-five it hit again. This time, however, I understood the cause. I was getting divorced, and my entire life was in turmoil.

It was at this time that I decided that I was going to do something about it. So, I …

Don’t Allow Anyone to Invalidate How You Feel

By Lori Deschene

How I Stopped Emotional Eating and Started Feeling Better About Life

By Sai Aparajitha Gopalakrishnan

“Don’t forget you’re human. It’s okay to have a meltdown, just don’t unpack and live there.” ~Unknown

For the longest time, I wanted to lose weight. I wasn’t terribly overweight but it seemed to me that if I could just have the perfect body, life would be amazing.

So, I threw everything but the kitchen sink at my food and exercise habits.

Never one to settle for small wins, I pushed myself to have the perfect diet—I prepped meals at home, didn’t eat out very much, and worked out as often as I could. Yes, the kind where I …

It’s Okay to Have Feelings, So Stop Saying “I’m Fine” When You’re Not

By Raphaela Browne

“I’d rather be honest and authentic and disappoint some people than to exhaust myself trying to keep up the façade of perfection.” ~Crystal Paine

So many people walk around each day masking their true feelings because they are considered the “strong one,” “the upbeat, bubbly one,” or, since they give so much of themselves supporting others, they’re not seen as having any emotions other than happy. If you’ve ever felt like you had to hold it together all the time to keep up a façade for others, there’s freedom in letting people know that you have feelings too.

Keeping …

How I Learned to Stop Absorbing Other People’s Emotions

By Melissa Renzi

“Sometimes I think I need a spare heart to feel all the things I feel.” ~Sanober Khan

I felt her agony and loneliness as if it were my own. Even as I write that sentence, my eyes well up and heaviness fills my heart. Then, I’m reminded to apply the advice I give others.

My mom was a special person, a sensitive soul just like me. Actually, I’m so much like she was, yet so different. One of the differences between us is that I had an opportunity to observe her life’s challenges. I saw her challenges reflected within myself …

Why Creativity Is the Path to Mindfulness, Happiness, and Peace

By Kathy Rausch

“Mindful and creative, a child who has neither a past, nor examples to follow, nor value judgments, simply lives, speaks and plays in freedom.” ~Arnaud Desjardins

No human being lives without experiencing the duality of life.

Good and bad. Love and hate. Life and death. Acceptance and rejection. Success and failure. Joy and jealousy. Compassion and judgment.

So why do we spend so much time trying to pretend that it’s bad to experience all of it, the good, the bad, and the ugly?

Even our weather men and women tell us it’s a going to be a bad day because …

Freeing Yourself from Problems and Habits by Seeing That You’re Already Free

By Dr. Amy Johnson

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

Imagine there is a river running through you.

Your entire experience of life flows through you, down that river. Everything you think, feel, and do passes through, powered by the current of the river.

Your emotions, your opinions, your sense of identity … your habits, diagnoses, and choices … they aren’t still or solid, sitting somewhere. They are brought to life, felt, and then they drift away. They …

How I Transformed My Anxiety and What to Do If You Feel Emotionally Stuck

By Dr. Eric Tan

“There is still vitality under the snow, even though to the casual eye it seems to be dead.” ~Agnes Sligh Turnbull

For as long as I can recall, I have always been a fretful and anxious person. Mine was a low-key anxiety that’s always colored the background of my life, a constant companion of ambiguous dread and imminent doom (just around the corner!)

The annoying part was that I never quite knew why the anxiety hung around. There weren’t any real situations in my life that evoked this constant, nagging fear.

I have tried various techniques to manage my anxiety. …

How to Accept Anxious Feelings So You Can Let Them Pass

By Benjamin Fishel

“Don’t try and save yourself. The self that is trying to be saved is not you.” ~Mooji

Three months ago I had a strange experience.

It wasn’t strange in that it had never happened before. It was strange in that it was unexpected. Unexpected in the way a hiccup comes up out of nowhere to interrupt a meal. No, actually, it was more unexpected in the way a sudden illness overtakes a period of health.

Just for a bit of context, over the last six months, I’ve generally been the calmest I’ve felt in years—maybe even my whole life. But …

Why Trying to Feel Good Can Make You Feel Bad

By Joel Almeida

“The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.” ~Paulo Coelho

We’re bombarded by images of people living apparently perfect lives. They suffer no bereavements or breakups or losses or failures. They look perfect, make perfect choices, and act perfect.

Everyone seems to love them as they sail from success to success, with zero misfortunes, mistakes, or regrets.

So, it’s easy to believe that we, too, need to be perfect.

I had a simple definition of success when I was younger. It was whatever made others admire, or at least accept me.…

How to Find That Something That Feels Missing

By Christine Rodriguez

“The spiritual path is simply the journey of living our lives. Everyone is on a spiritual path; most people just don’t know it.” ~Marianne Williamson

I remember it as if it happened yesterday. I woke up in the middle of the night with the worst tightening of my chest that I had ever experienced. My heart was racing uncontrollably, my hands were clammy and cold, and nothing I did brought relief.

I prayed. I chanted. I tapped. I prayed and then prayed some more.

I thought I was going to die. I started to immediately regret all of the …

Your Feelings Are Valid

By Lori Deschene

A First Aid Kit for When Life Falls Apart

By Helena Önneby

“What if pain—like love—is just a place brave people visit?” ~Glennon Doyle

It’s one of life’s greatest paradoxes: When life is easy, everything seems easy. When life is hard, everything seems hard.

This one keeps coming back to me and I keep trying to figure it out. Why do we end up in these spirals of “all good” or “all bad”? How can we get out of the “all bad” faster next time we get trapped? How can we help ourselves get out of there?

I’ve had periods in my life when all seemed lost. When I haven’t been able …

Making the Hurt Visible: How I Stopped Hating the Man and Learned to Listen to Myself

By Dr. Lisa Klieger

“Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.” ~Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

We’ve just passed the year anniversary of an event that has greatly changed our country. The shock of the election results last year sent waves of powerful emotions rippling through our nation.

Personally, I felt the effects as intense and immediate grief. It was as though I had just lost my dearest companion.

I had days of shock, despair, feelings of intense cold with physical shaking and episodes of vomiting and nausea, followed by weeks of sleepless nights, spontaneous sweating, nightmares …