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Posts tagged with “emotions”

Learning to Honor My Grief When the World Has Become Desensitized to Loss

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“The answer to the pain of grief is not how to get yourself out of it, but how to support yourself inside it.” ~Unknown 

Since losing my husband Matt over eight months ago to cancer at the age of just thirty-nine, I have noticed so many changes happening within me, and one of those changes is a fierce sense of protectiveness that I have over my grief.

We are living in a unique time in history. The world has turned upside down due to the coronavirus pandemic, and at the time of writing this the UK had just passed 100,000 …

How I Finally Healed When I Stopped Believing a Diagnosis of Incurable

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“The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.” ~Rumi

The quarantine has felt oddly familiar. That’s because I spent thirteen years largely homebound with a mysterious, viral-like illness. It even started with a cold on a flight back from Asia in 2005.

My nose was an open faucet, and my head felt like the cumulus clouds outside my window. When I returned to San Diego, I was so weak and exhausted, I could hardly get out of bed. My brain and body were on fire.

I couldn’t focus or recall names of coworkers. Although I’d previously been …

How I Reclaimed My Life When I Felt Numb and Unhappy

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“All appears to change when we change.” ~Henri-Frédéric Amiel

The biggest life-changing moment in my life would have looked unremarkable to an outsider looking in.

I was at a point in my life (my late twenties) where everything seemed to look good on paper. I had a great job, I was living in downtown Seattle, and I enjoyed the live music scene. Aside from not being in a relationship, I thought I had “arrived.”

The only problem was, I was miserable, and I barely acknowledged it. A part of me knew that I wasn’t happy, but I tried to …

How Embracing Your Sensitivity Can Benefit Your Relationship

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“Today I want you to think about all that you are instead of all that you are not.” ~Unknown

If you are a sensitive person like me, you may think being sensitive is problematic. Especially when it comes to love and relationships.

Maybe you’ve been called “too sensitive” by your partner or a parent. Maybe you feel overly emotional or have strong reactions to things or take things personally that don’t bother your partner, or you are easily irritated or get cranky all too often, or you feel the urge to be alone a lot more than you …

How I Found the Courage to Leave an Abusive Relationship

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“Do something today that your future self will thank you for.” ~Unknown

My whole life has been filled with toxic and abusive relationships, starting with extreme physical and emotional abuse from my parents, right up to the last relationship that I left in 2013. Abuse—physical, sexual, emotional, and verbal—is all I’ve ever known.

My entire life. I knew it wasn’t normal.

I desperately wanted to be loved, appreciated, and respected. I desperately wanted ‘normal,’ whatever that was. I longed for a fairy tale romance. I longed for happiness and peace. I just wasn’t convinced I would ever have that.

And …

When You Feel Bad About Feeling Sad and Anxious

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“You don’t have to be brave all of the time. You are not damaged or defeated. Have patience. Give yourself permission to grieve, to cry, and to heal. Allow a bit of compassion, you’re doing the best you can. We all are.” ~Unknown

Growing up, I received the message that everything had to look a certain way. It was only okay to feel positive emotions, and any expression of unruly emotions was totally unacceptable.

It wasn’t that anyone directly said this to me. I wasn’t given a written set of rules to follow. I wasn’t given any speeches or trainings …

A Buddhist Chaplain Shares How to Cope with the Pandemic

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EDITOR’S NOTE: You can find a number of helpful coronavirus resources and all related Tiny Buddha articles here.

When I decided over two years ago to become a Buddhist Chaplain, I could’ve never dreamed that I would be experiencing our current pandemic crisis.

I chose to become a Buddhist Chaplain after I lost my son in 2010. The experience of losing a child forever changed how I related to the world and how I relate to grief, suffering, and compassion.

One of the most profound lessons I learned about grief is that it doesn’t have to follow the …

Surviving as an Empath During the Time of Coronavirus

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EDITOR’S NOTE: You can find a number of helpful coronavirus resources and all related Tiny Buddha articles here.

“When we can talk about our feelings, they become less overwhelming, less upsetting and less scary.” ~Fred Rogers

If you are a human on earth at the moment, you’re likely feeling the uncertainty and anxiety of living in the time of a pandemic. It’s not something we have seen before in our lifetime, so every step is a new one, and the end is unknown and nowhere in sight.

Everyone is coping in their own way. Some are fearful and anxious …

In My World, There Are No Bad Kids

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How to Ease Your Suffering and Confusion by Deciphering Your Emotions

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“The symphony of bodily feeling, mental thoughts, and images is emotion. It is the symphony on which people must learn to focus, to understand their inner stirrings and to harness its message.” ~Dr. Leslie Greenberg

Like most people in our Western culture, I didn’t learn to read the language of emotions growing up. I had no clue that our emotions are purposeful information about ourselves, our relationships, and our experience in the world around us. They actually carry messages about what to do—what actions to take to meet our needs for safety, balance, and contentment.

Like all people, my parents …

Your Emotions Will Not Drown You; They Will Save You

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“You weren’t built to be calm, cool, and collected all the time. If you were, it wouldn’t feel so exhausting.”~Ryan O’Connell 

There’s a lot of talk nowadays about “highly sensitive people” and “empaths.” It can be difficult for people who don’t relate to these labels to understand, or even believe what more sensitive folks experience. As a culture, we’re just beginning to grasp what sensitivity is and how to manage our energy.

What Sensitivity Actually Is

It’s easy to get caught up in cultural biases and stigmas concerning personality traits, and sensitivity has always been a part of that. …

The Negative Impact of Not Feeling Your Feelings

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“If the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world.” ~Sidney Banks

I spent most of my life scared of my feelings. Having feelings and expressing them made me mentally ill—or so I was led to believe by a large number of mental health professionals. When I felt sad, they labeled me as depressed. When I showed any signs of anxiety, they gave me another list of mental health disorders I needed medication for. And if I was angry? Oh well, that was the absolute worst. That clearly proved …

My Favorite Tip to Ease the Pain of Grief

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“It’s also helpful to realize that this very body that we have, that’s sitting right here right now…with its aches and its pleasures…is exactly what we need to be fully human, fully awake, fully alive.” ~Pema Chodron

Many people like to think of grief as an emotional experience. It’s something that dominates your internal, emotional space, and that’s it.

But it doesn’t take long when you’re in the thick of grief to experience grief that isn’t emotional at all.

You feel heavy. Like there’s a giant weight on your shoulders.

You feel like your legs are weak and shaking from …

How to Practice Joy and Bravery

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“We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses.” ~Alphonse Karr

“You should have told them. You should have told them you like it. They need to know people are happy there.”

“I know I should have. But I didn’t want to seem insensitive or make anyone feel bad.”

We sat at the dinner table, my boyfriend looking at me, me staring at my cleaned plate. We’d had variations of this conversation before. I tell him my coworkers aren’t happy at work, but I am happy at work, and he is forever confused as to …

How to Fight Well in Your Relationship

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“Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.” ~Rumi

I had one of those really intense arguments with my partner recently, and it made me realize the importance of knowing how to fight well in a relationship.

That might sound like an oxymoron, but there isn’t a relationship I know of where the couple doesn’t fall out at one point or another. Fights can make or break a relationship. That’s why it’s important you know how to fight well—because the success of any relationship isn’t based on how well you manage the good times …

Growing in the Dark: Why “Negative Feelings” Matter

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“Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over to annihilation can that which is indestructible in us be found.” ~Pema Chodron

Pop spirituality and our cultural attitude would have you think it best to banish negativity from your life. Give it the quarantine treatment until it gets better and can rejoin our polite, positive, placative society.

We are encouraged to cleanse negativity, a blanket descriptor of things that don’t feel good. Push it away with an exhale and inhale positivity. Anger, sadness, and critical thinking can all be forms of “bad vibes” that are sought to be …

How to Embrace Your Sensitive Superpower and Stop Feeling Overwhelmed

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“With realization of one’s own potential and self-confidence in one’s ability, one can build a better world.” – Dalai Lama

Sensitivity can feel like a gift or a burden, depending on our relationship to it.

If you often feel completely overwhelmed by an overload of stimulation, then your sensitivity probably doesn’t feel like an asset. Maybe more like a liability. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

As an introvert and sensitive person, I’ve navigated these waters my whole life, and I’ve come to realize that sensitivity is more than a gift—it’s a superpower! But first we need to …

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.…

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 …

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 …