Posts tagged with “trauma”

When Life Gets Hard: 4 Lessons That Eased My Suffering
âIn some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning.â ~Viktor Frankl
When life goes sideways, it can be hard to take one more breath, let alone find meaning.
Trust me. I know.
In the same year, I had breast cancer, chemo, radiation, and a divorce I didnât want. Thereâs more to the story (there always is), but in essence, I lost everythingâmy health, my love, my home.
During all of this, I lost sight of myself, quit trusting myself. I was sure I was to blame for everything.
At the same time, within twenty-four …

Forbidden Emotions: The Feelings We Suppress and Why Theyâre Not Bad
âThe truth is that there is no such thing as a negative emotion. Emotions only become âbadâ and have a negative effect on us when they are suppressed, denied, or unexpressed.â ~Colin Tipping
Emotions are constantly and powerfully guiding our lives, even when we are not aware of them, even when we do not feel them or are convinced that we can exclude them from our experiences.
Emotions give us precious, sometimes indispensable information about what is best for us, about the best choices we can make, about how to behave. They give us information that we often do not …

Why I Couldnât Find Love and What Helped Me (That Might Help You Too)
“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start from where you are and change the end.” ~C.S. LewisÂ
It was a dark January day in 2008 when my auntie called with the news âHe did it.â
I felt so confused. âDid he try? Or did he succeed?â I asked as my body moved into shock.
âHe succeeded,â she said. And in that moment my whole life changed.
This was a moment I often wished forâmy dad was gone.
Dad had taken his life on January 8th, 2008, two days after my twenty-sixth birthday. He …

How I Stopped Arguing with People in My Head and Cultivated Calm
âThoughts fuel emotions. If you donât like what youâre feeling, step back and examine what youâre thinking. Pain is inevitable, but youâll suffer a lot less if you disengage from your thoughts.â ~Lori Deschene
The warm droplets from the shower are bouncing off my skin. I could be relishing in the warmth. I could be exhilarated by the cleansing power of this precious water.
Instead, I am entranced by an argument.
I’m animated and tense. Gesticulating wildly and frowning.
In the shower.
There’s no one else there. I’m not shouting or even speaking out loud. This is all happening in …

How to Trust Yourself After the Trauma of Being Dismissed and Invalidated
âHave the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.â ~Steve Jobs
I was a sensitive child growing up, and I felt everything deeply. Unfortunately, my childhood home was dominated by chronic tension, fear, and angerânot an ideal environment for anyone, let alone a perceptive and empathic child.
My father was rather authoritative and controlling, and he disciplined us harshly. I was raised to obey without questioning and punished for mistakes or not falling in line.
Love was only assumed but never shared, and so I grew up feeling alone, unsupported, …

What Creates Anxiety and How We Can Heal and Ease Our Pain
“Beneath every behavior there is a feeling. And beneath each feeling is a need. And when we meet that need, rather than focus on the behavior, we begin to deal with the cause, not the symptom.” ~Ashleigh Warner
Do you ever wonder what creates anxiety and why so many people are anxious?
Anxiety doesnât just come from a thought weâre thinking, it comes from inside our bodyâfrom our internal patterning, where unresolved trauma, deep shame, and painful experiences are still ârunning.â
It often comes from false underlying beliefs that say, âSomethingâs wrong with me, Iâm flawed, Iâm bad, …

If Youâve Been Abused and Youâve Lost Your Joy and Sense of Self
âYou may not control all the events that happen to you, but you can choose not to be reduced by them.â ~Maya Angelou
I know what you’re feeling because I’ve been there. You’re sitting quietly with your pain asking yourself if the abuse really happened or if you just fabricated it in your mind like they said you did.
You’re wondering if you’re too sensitive. If you really did hurt them as much as they claim you did. There’s a small part of you that wonders if you actually deserved to be treated poorly because of what you said or …

The Abuse Behind My Happy Family Pictures (and Why We Should Talk About It)
TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with an account of physical abuse and may be triggering to some people.
âThere remains what seems to be an impenetrable wall of silence around violence, and we must all play a role in breaking this silence.â ~Reese Witherspoon
The other day my brother sent me some rare old photographs of my family. In the middle of those aged images, I found a picture of a seven-year-old girl, so cute! She was wearing two perfect long braids and a smile. Oh, the smile of this lovely girl!
There was also an image of a man …

Why I Donât Define Myself as a Victim and What I Do Instead
âThe struggle of my life created empathyâI could relate to pain, being abandoned, having people not love me.â ~Oprah Winfrey
See yourself as a victim and you become one. Identify as a victim and you give your tormentor power over you, the very power to define who you are.
Statements like this have become commonly accepted wisdom today because they are undoubtedly true. If you see yourself as a victim, you will be one. You will be someone who has been defeated, someone who is at the mercy of another, and that is no way to live.
And yet, the …

10 Reasons Why I Ditched the Drink & What Happened When I Quit Alcohol
âWhen I got sober, I thought giving up was saying goodbye to all the fun and all the sparkle, and it turned out to be just the opposite. Thatâs when the sparkle started for me.â ~Mary Karr
Growing up I thought alcohol meant adulthood. As a child I eagerly watched the cacophony of advertisements, commercials, TV shows, and movies swirling, mixing, swigging, sipping, and smelling those delicious drinks that the beautiful and the sexy preferred.
Alcohol was literally the forbidden fruitâa mystery and an abomination that not my parents, nor anyone in my familyâreally had anything to do with. I …

Emotionally Numb and Physically Disconnected? DDD May Be the Problem
âOf all things, it would seem, make friends with depersonalization. Enemies within consciousness never work, and only escalate the problem. Befriend it, consider it part of life to work with it. We can’t expel it or cancel it. When we try, the pressure makes a volcano out of it. This is true of so many things, it must be true of DDD too.â ~David Hench
Do you ever feel like youâre not feeling anything, although you know that you have feelings? That youâre operating on autopilot, more like a robot than a living person? That your self is hiding …

How Meeting and Re-Parenting My Inner Child Helped Me Love Myself
âTo love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.â ~Oscar Wilde
The journey to meeting, loving, and re-parenting my inner child was a long time coming.
In 2018, I went through a devastating breakup. Iâd been through breakups before. They suck, they hurt, some of them left me in deep abysses of sadness for a long time, but this one was something different.
I can honestly say I felt levels of pain I did not know were survivable for a human being. Many days, I did not want to survive; I couldnât imagine continuing to be in that …

What I Really Mean When I Say Iâm Fine (Spoiler: Iâm Not)
âTears are words that need to be written.â ~Paulo Coelho
It was lovely to see you today. I havenât seen you in such a long time. So much has happened since the last time we saw each other.
You asked me how I was. I politely replied, âIâm fineâ and forced a smile that I hoped would be believable. It must have worked. You smiled back and said, âI’m so glad to hear that. You look great.â
But Iâm not really fine. I havenât been fine for a very long time, and I wonder if I will ever know what …

How I Stopped Putting Everyone Elseâs Needs Above My Own
“Never feel sorry for choosing yourself.” ~Unknown
I was eleven years old, possibly twelve, the day I first discovered my motherâs betrayal. I assume she didn’t hear me when I walked in the door after school. The distant voices in the finished basement room of our home drew me in. My motherâs voice was soft as she spoke to her friend. What was she hiding that she didnât want me to hear?
I leaned in a little bit closer to the opening of the stairs⊠She was talking about a man sheâd met. Her voice changed when she spoke of …

Where Our Inner Critic Comes from and How to Tame It
âYour inner critic is simply a part of you that needs more self-love.â ~Amy Leigh Mercee
We all have that critical and judgmental inner voice that tells us weâre not good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, etc.
It tells us we donât do anything right. It calls us stupid. It compares us to other people and speaks harshly about ourselves and our bodies. It tells us all the things we did or said âwrongâ after communicating or connecting with someone.
Sometimes it projects criticism outward onto others so we can feel better about ourselves. Other times we try to …

I Was a Bulimic Nutritionist, but Iâm No Longer Ashamed or Hiding
âShame derives its power from being unspeakable.â ~ BrenĂ© Brown
I felt like a hypocrite. I would tell my nutrition clients to eat a salad with vegetables, then I’d go home and scarf down an entire pizza. After guilt and shame set in, I would purge and throw it up.
I think I became a nutritionist partly so I could better control my relationship with food. If I learned the secrets behind eating I could biohack my way to putting the fork down, losing weight, and finally being happy. This was back when I thought thinness equaled happiness.
It’s taken …

FREE Online MindBody Therapy Summit for Healing and Well-Being, June 2-6
Hi friends! I’m excited to let you know about the MindBody Therapy Summit, a FREE online event, presented by the Embody Lab, thatâs coming up next week.
In this inspiring 5-day summit, running from June 2nd through June 6th, youâll hear from some of the most impactful healers, teachers, and researchers at the intersection of wellness, spirituality, psychology, embodiment, and somatics.
What Is MindBody Therapy?
MindBody therapy helps us understand and shift what gets in the way of being free, happy, and fully alive.
While traditional therapy focuses on verbal processing and cognitive meaning making, MindBody …