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Search Results for "anxiety" — 1282 posts

How Embracing and Loving My “Negative” Emotions Helped Heal My Pain

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“Do not fight against pain; do not fight against irritation or jealousy. Embrace them with great tenderness, as though you were embracing a little baby. Your anger is yourself, and you should not be violent toward it. The same thing goes for all your emotions.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

For a long time, heaviness and dark feelings were very familiar to me. In a strange way they were comforting; I felt safe in darkness. The light felt more painful to me, but I also wanted to change because I wanted to free myself from the limitations of staying in the dark.…

Why We Close Ourselves Off to Friendships and How to Open Up

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“If you accept a limiting belief, then it will become a truth for you.” ~Louise Hay

Picking the flimsy gold lock on my groovy denim-covered childhood diary, I’m instantly transported back to my ten-year-old life.

Each page duly describes what I what I ate for dinner that day as well as what my two best friends and I got up to. It was 1976 and we were obsessed with Charlie’s Angels, cruising around “undercover” on our bikes, solving fresh crimes around the neighborhood.

Every couple of weeks I’d report the latest drama amongst the three of us. Either my …

Accepting My Autistic Self: Why I’m Done Trying to Fit In

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“I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.” ~Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

A common misconception about autistic people is that we don’t care if we’re alone. Of course this varies with each person, but on the whole, it’s untrue. We want to feel included, it’s just not easy for us to fit in. There are other days when I feel autism has separated me so fully from other people that I am functioning on a different plane of existence, not just with a different …

How to Find Your Fighting Spirit When Life Gets Tough

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“Sometimes, life will kick you around, but sooner or later, you realize you’re not just a survivor. You’re a warrior, and you’re stronger than anything life throws your way.” ~Brooke Davis

No matter how positive we are, how healthily we live, or how much kindness, generosity, or fairness we practice, shit happens. To all of us. And suddenly, we find ourselves juggling more balls than it seems humanly possible to juggle.

I’ve had my share of this…

When my father died suddenly when I was in my twenties. When I was lost in a bottomless depression for two …

9 Lessons from my 9-Month-Old Nephew, Who’s Taught Me How to Live

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“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” ~William Arthur Ward

Oliver.

Ahh, my heart skips a beat at just the sound of his name.

In 2018, a tiny human being arrived on the planet, one who would change my life. In the short nine months my nephew Oliver has been in my life, I’ve learned a lot. I’m not talking about changing nappies and bottle-feeding, although I’m getting to grips with these essentials too. No, Oliver has taught me valuable lessons about life itself. Here are nine of the biggest.

1.

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The Invisible Effects of Social Media: When It’s Time to Stop Scrolling

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“What you do today is important because you are exchanging a day of your life for it.” ~Unknown

Is there a more precious commodity than time? It’s the currency of life; the most basic finite resource, and we have a responsibility to spend it wisely. It’s up to us each individually to figure out what that means to us. For me, that means being mindful of the people, activities, and thoughts to which I give my time and energy.

I am an obsessive reader, and at any one time I have at least fifteen books checked out of the …

The Beauty of Doing Nothing: Why I’ve Embraced Being Unproductive

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“Every good cause is worth some inefficiency.” ~Paul Samuelson

I made a mess yesterday. The mess is still there. Who knows when the mess will disappear.

The mess provided me with one of those sense-pleasing plates of food that lingers in the mind long after the last bite. The kind that makes you wonder if there is a rhyme and reason to our world after all. A plate of food so delectable it provided a raison for my être. (If only for a little while.)

But this story is not about the art of nourishing oneself. It is about …

We Keep Going, One Tiny Step at a Time, and We Should Be Proud

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“Don’t wait until you reach your goal to be proud of yourself. Be proud of every step you take.” ~Karen Salmansohn

One of the greatest ironies of being human is that we’re often hardest on ourselves right when we should be most proud.

Let’s say you finally find the courage to start a dream project you’ve fantasized about for as long as you can remember. You push through years of built-up fears, overcome massive internal resistance, and take the leap despite feeling like you’re jumping through a ring of fire, above a pit filled with burning acid.

It’s one of …

Overcoming Intergenerational Trauma: We Can Break the Cycle of Abuse

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“Our ancestors knew that healing comes in cycles and circles. One generation carries the pain so that the next can live and heal. One cannot live without the other, each is the other’s hope, meaning and strength.” ~Gemma B. Benton

I thought I had no value, my opinion meaningless. My sense of self was decimated. Finally, I got angry and attacked.

“You can’t imagine the pain you’ve put me through!” I yelled. “You don’t even know who I am. You can’t see it. You’re refusing to take responsibility for the way you raised me! Not thinking is not an excuse! …

How I Learned to Like and Trust Myself When It Was Hard

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“Loving yourself starts with liking yourself, which starts with respecting yourself, which starts with thinking of yourself in positive ways.” ~Jerry Corsten

Useless. Hopeless. Broken.

This was how I saw myself.

I didn’t completely loathe myself, but I didn’t like myself either. At best, I tolerated myself.

I felt I had good reasons to.

I’d gotten myself into, as we say in England, a right old pickle.

If you’re not familiar with this charming expression, I had gotten myself into a big mess.

In my early twenties, over a painful period of about eighteen months, I’d gradually buried myself …

How Recovering People-Pleasers Can Discover What They Really Want

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“When you say ‘yes’ to others, make sure you’re not saying ‘no’ to yourself.” ~Paulo Coelho

People-pleasers regularly subvert their own needs for the needs of others. We spend years saying “yes” when we mean “no,” signing up for commitments we’d rather avoid, and occupying our minds with others’ desires.

When we finally clear out the clutter to put ourselves first, we look around at the empty space, bewildered, with endless questions. What do we want? What does true happiness look like for us? What would a life lived on our own terms be like?

For me, these questions once …

How to Get Past Doubt and Do What You Really Want to Do

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“Doubt everything. Find your own light.” ~The Buddha

As far back as I can remember, I’ve allowed my life to be shaped by external forces.

On the outside, it appeared like I was just another carefree soul, living in the moment and going through life like a leaf on the wind. But on closer inspection, I was actually running away from having to make any real commitments and avoiding getting into a position where I had to make difficult or important decisions.

It wasn’t until recently, when I realized it was four years to the date since I’d fallen into …

One of Those Days? How to Deal When Everything Irritates You

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“Be proactive not reactive, for an apparently insignificant issue ignored today can spawn tomorrow’s catastrophe.” ~Ken Poirot 

Do you ever have one of those mornings where the battle against annoying minutiae begins before you’re even truly awake?

One of those days where you feel the illusion of control fully slipping away. You try to grasp and pull it back, but you really have no control over this day or its outcome, at all.

We dread these types of days, don’t we? The control freak in me gets uncomfortable thinking about it. Even the Meet The Parents movies make me …

The Key to Acceptance: Understand That Everything Changes With Time

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“If you argue with reality, you lose, but only 100% of the time.” ~Byron Katie

I love this quote. Ironic, really, because when I first read it I was furious—furious with my reality and anyone who encouraged me to accept it. In my mind to accept chronic illness was to accept defeat.

I had just been diagnosed with fibromyaglia, an incredibly painful condition that had me bedridden most days and unable to care for my then two-year-old daughter, never mind myself. My home became filled with carers and aids and adaptations.

Rather than starting a new career as a newly …

What Your “Negative” Emotions Are Trying to Tell You

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“Life will only change when you become more committed to your dreams than you are to your comfort zone.” ~Billy Cox

It might sound like a senseless paradox to say that the “bad” or “dark” things about you are actually your “light” or “positive” qualities. However, this isn’t just a feel-good platitude; it’s literally true. The things we struggle with the most are our greatest sources of empowerment.

Because this process is not exactly front and center of modern mental health and wellness movements, committing to your own healing can seem daunting and hopeless. Few people have truly learned how …

How I Went From the Pain of People-Pleasing to the Freedom of Being Me

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“How hurtful it can be to deny one’s own true self and live a life of lies just to appease others.” ~June Ahern

Growing up I felt lost, separate, and different from everyone else in my family. After all, everyone else was a fit; they pursued the same hobbies, had the same aspirations, and even thought in the same way (everything was very black and white with hardly any grey areas). I was interested, it seemed, in everything they were not interested in.

I had a different way of looking at the world. Any task I was asked to …

Why I Focus on the Now Instead of What I Want for the Future

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“The next message you need is always right where you are.” ~Ram Dass

I want you to go back to New Year’s Day 2009 with me for a second. I’d recently left a job and was embarking upon a new career, one in which I was self-employed.

I pulled out all the stops and created a vision board that contained all of the things: how much money I wanted to earn, how I wanted to dress, where I wanted to vacation, how I wanted to eat, and everything else I could think of. I thought if I created this …

How Expressing Myself Helped Me Release Chronic Pain

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“Live life as if everything is rigged in your favor.” ~ Rumi

It can be frightening to experience physical or mental pain. It’s not something anyone wants to deal with; nobody wants to race against the clock hoping that some future experience will take away their pain. Nobody wants to question the purpose of anything, like seeing a friend or even traveling, just because they feel their pain will ruin it.

During my freshman year at college, I woke up one day with horrific nerve pain in my legs and in my pelvic area. What was this? My instinct told …

How I Overcame Childhood Emotional Neglect and Learned to Meet My Needs

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“In order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did and why you no longer need to feel it.” ~Mitch Albom

“Your feelings are valid,” said my life coach during one of our sessions, as we were working on an issue I had with my parents.

I had to do a double take. My feelings are valid? She actually accepts them as they are?

Eventually it started to dawn on me: My parents never validated my feelings. This sudden revelation earlier this year threw me into a dark period of my life.

When I was …

Why I’ve Decided to Accept Myself Instead of Trying to ‘Fix’ Myself

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“No amount of self-improvement can make up for any lack of self-acceptance.” ~Robert Holden

In our culture, we are constantly bombarded with the newest and best things to improve ourselves and/or our quality of life. Unfortunately, this leads to the belief that we need to obtain some sort of thing before we could accept ourselves as we are.

When I was a child, I constantly battled with my weight. By the age of fourteen, I was 225 pounds (mind you, I am 5’2,” on a good day).

Fortunately for me, a doctor pointed out the concern of childhood obesity. …