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Search Results for "anxiety" — 1280 posts

5 Things That Helped Me Feel More Secure in Friendships

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“Our brains are wired for connection, but trauma rewires them for protection. That’s why healthy relationships are difficult for wounded people.” ~Ryan North

If popular culture is anything to go by, everyone has the perfect gang to hang with in coffee shops, engaging in witty banter. Or a BFF who knows them better than anyone else and will be there through thick and thin. So, if friendships make you anxious and you find them hard to navigate, it’s easy to feel ashamed and think it’s just you.

I had problems with friendships for most of my life, and it often …

How to Tend to the Garden Within and Help Create a More Peaceful World

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“Until we transform ourselves, we are like mobs of angry people screaming for peace. In order to move the world, we must be able to stand still in it.” ~Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

It only happens about every ten years or so. The primal scream. It gets unleashed when things feel like too much.

But it happened recently, to the dismay of my husband who was enjoying a rare moment of quiet in the house. I had just dropped our son off to basketball practice. The soup I’d picked up for dinner spilled in the car, and the lid to the …

The Magic of the Mountain: My Perfect Healing Recipe

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When I woke up this morning, the first thing I did was a guided meditation titled “Cultivating Joy.” In this meditation I was taken back to a time when I felt joy. The first thing that popped into my mind was a time about three weeks ago; my husband, my dog Lily, and I had traveled to Wintergreen Resort to celebrate my birthday.

Wintergreen has always been a magical place for me. I was born and raised in the same county, but just on the other side of the mountain. My idea of a birthday celebration has become much less …

How to Process Intense Feelings with Mindfulness: 4 Powerful Steps

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“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, …

How to Find Peace When Your Mind Is Restless

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“Within you, there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time and be yourself.” ~Hermann Hesse

When I work with people who are suffering from anxiety, fear, grief, or other challenging issues, I like to take them through a simple exercise I call “The Noticing Exercise.”

It’s my first port of call when helping people break free from mind-created suffering.

It’s amazing how quickly, and effortlessly, people can move from suffering to peace, simply through shifting their focus to being aware of the present moment—noticing the sensation of the body touching the chair, …

The Epiphany That Freed Me from My Body Obsession

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“Your body is precious. It is your vehicle for awakening. Treat it with care.” ~Buddha

What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear or see the word fitness? Do you think of an Olympic power lifting athlete, gymnast, or swimmer? The way we interpret and respond to the word fitness is a driver of physical health, but also our mental health.

From a young age I associated health with fitness, which, to me, meant fitter is better. Society fed me the image of perfection. And so the chase of fitness became a moving target that …

How to Slow Down and Take Care of Yourself

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“You are worth the quiet moment. You are worth the deeper breath. You are worth the time it takes to slow dow, be still and rest.” ~Morgan Harper Nichols

“It’s great to see you without three laptops and two phones,” my cardiologist quipped. I nodded, remembering how, a year earlier, I’d sat in the ICU tethered to my to-do list while having a heart attack. Even as the doctors were attaching wires and monitors to me, I couldn’t put my laptop down. I believed that everything would fall apart if I stopped to take care of myself.

It had …

How to Let Go of Your Dream When It’s Time to Move On

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“We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” ~Joseph Campbell

There’s something I find rarely talked about in discussions about letting go, but I notice all the time. It’s not the release from letting go of outdated stuff. It’s not grieving the loss of loved ones. It’s not healing from trauma. All of these precious topics are talked about and should be more so.

What I find rarely discussed is the letting go of past versions of oneself—often versions you’ve worked tirelessly to …

Why I Love My Anger and How It Can Be a Force for Good

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“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, …

Why I Love My Sober Life: Everything I Gained When I Quit Drinking

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“Sobriety was the greatest gift I ever gave myself.” ~Rob Lowe

I tried and failed to have a fabulous relationship with alcohol for many years.

When my children were tiny, I drank far more than was good for me, thinking I was relaxing, unwinding, socializing, and having fun. I’d seen my life shrink down from a world with lots of freedom and vibrancy to a socially restricted void, and I wanted to feel normal. I wanted to join in with everyone else.

All my birthday cards had bottles of gin or glasses of fizz on them, all the Friday afternoon …

Forever Healing: 4 Things I Now Prioritize After Cancer

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“I have come to believe that caring for myself is not self indulgent. Caring for myself is an act of survival.” ~Audre Lorde

I’m a year out after completing chemo treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and on my healing journey. Cancer is a nasty little thing and can rear its ugly head at any time again. So, to minimize those recurrent chances and to feel like I’m doing all that’s in my control, I’ve accepted that this healing path will be for the rest of my life.

I originally thought I’d be spending this first year rebuilding myself. And I have. …

7 Pillars of Mental Health: How to Feel Your Best (Almost) Every Day

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“Sending love to everyone who’s doing their best to heal from things they don’t discuss.” ~Unknown

When I was twelve years old, I planned on taking my own life. I had a plan, I had the means, and I thought about it every single day for months. No one was aware—not my family, not my best friends, not my teachers at school or my peers. It would have been a huge surprise in my community had I attempted it, because I didn’t appear as someone who was severely depressed.

Thankfully, I never acted on it, and fifteen years later I …

Handling Lifequakes: How to Navigate the Storms of Change

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“How you revise, rethink, and rewrite your personal narrative as things change, lurch, or go wrong in your life matters a great deal.”  ~Bruce Feiler

It’s happened to all of us.

Just when life is going smoothly, a big, scary event comes along that threatens to ruin everything.

A frightening diagnosis, a relationship breakup, the death of a loved one, a job loss, or the COVID-19 pandemic.

Your life gets turned upside down when you least expect it.

I don’t know about you, but my life has been full of significant life changes over the last ten years: my …

How Replacing Worry with Gratitude Turned My Whole Life Around

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“When I started counting my blessings, my whole life turned around.” ~Willie Nelson

You know you’re not living the life of your dreams when you’re doing mundane things like brushing your teeth, doing laundry, getting dressed, or preparing a meal, and your constant thoughts are “Oh, we need more toothpaste or laundry detergent, but we can’t get either right now. Money’s too tight.” Or “We should get more milk and lettuce, but we have to put that money toward our utility bill so our lights don’t get turned off.”

This train of thought started to be the norm for me …

How to Release the Fear That Keeps Our Lives Small

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“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 …

How I Went from Approval Seeking to Authentic Living

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“My life transformed when I stopped caring what people in the stands thought.” ~Brené Brown

One afternoon, I had coffee with a friend who told me that she and her family all have a garden campfire every Friday night and toast marshmallows. It sounded so rustically idyllic compared to our normal frozen pizza and movie tradition that I asked my husband if we could do the same that evening.

He sat down to pick up the remote control and casually replied that he was too tired to build a fire, then thought nothing more of it. But I felt devastated …

Take the 30-Day Self-Care Challenge!

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Hi friend! As we approach the New Year, I imagine many of you, like me, are thinking about what you’d like to do differently in 2024—or who and how you want to be in the year ahead.

Though we likely all have varied goals, I can say with total confidence it all starts with the same thing: self-care.

Whether you want more adventure, meaning, peace, love, joy, or anything else, it’s all more attainable if you feel your best, physically, mentally, and emotionally.

With this in mind, I recently created a 30-Day Self-Care Challenge that can help us all take …

Why I Sense Threats Everywhere and Panic All the Time

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“Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves.” ~Bessel A. van der Kolk

I have a prescription for Lorazepam.

After coming home from picking up my first ever bottle from the pharmacy several years ago, I threw the bottle at the wall and cried.

I used …

How a Rescue Dog Helped Heal My Lonely, Longing Heart

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“Maybe it’s time for the fighter to be fought for, the holder to be held, and the lover to be loved.” ~Unknown

There’s this cheesy saying I heard once—“Dog, when spelled backwards, is god.” As a companion to my dog, I can honestly say this is truer than you might ever imagine it to be.

There is something special about dogs or perhaps animals in general. They are not plugged into the matrix of human dramas and suffering the way we are entrenched in it. And because they are out of that cycle, in a way, they become our bodhisattvas.…

How I’ve Learned to Love My Inner Weirdo

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“I want to think again of dangerous and noble things. I want to be light and frolicsome. I want to be improbable, beautiful and afraid of nothing, as though I had wings.” ~Mary Oliver

 I was a beautiful, wild, and exhilarating kid. I marched to the beat of my unicorn drum and, to the confusion of adults, I did not fit into the typical boxes they had been anticipating.

This little kid was ready to thrive!

The freedom did not last long. My zest for life and unicorn drum beat quickly symbolized my weirdness. Adults tilted their heads in perplexity …