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Posts tagged with “emotions”

How to Deal with Uncomfortable Feelings & Create Positive Ones

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“Hope is the feeling that the feeling you have isn’t permanent.” ~Jean Kerr

For most of my life, I was a fugitive from my feelings.

Psychologists suggest that we are driven by two connected motivations: to feel pleasure and avoid pain. Most of us devote more energy to the latter than the former.

Instead of being proactive and making choices for our happiness, we react to things that happen in our lives and fight or flee to minimize our pain.

Instead of deciding to end an unhealthy relationship and open up to a better one, we may stay and either …

Making It Through Pain That Seems to Never End

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“Feelings are real and legitimate.” ~Unknown

I’ve been thinking about pain lately.

It’s come up for me more now since my sister, Susie, has been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis.

Susie and I are close in age—just 15 months separate us—and close in friendship and love. So I worry about her.

She’s an electrician and needs to be able to use her hands on a daily basis for wiring, splicing, drilling, and all of the other myriad things electricians do.

But, of course, her hands are right where the arthritis has chosen to reside currently.

She told me that some days …

Getting to the Root of Pain to Work Through It and Be Happy

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“The secret of joy is the mastery of pain” ~Anais Nin

I come from a family of runners. They run from pain, emotions, and uncomfortable feelings.

My mom was 17 when she moved to Texas to get away from her overbearing mother. She couldn’t deal with the pain of never being enough for her parents or herself. She left her parents, extended family, and friends behind in Mississippi without a second glance.

A recovering anorexic, she was looking for something, anything that would ease the pain and prove she was okay.

My father arrived in Texas in his …

Dealing with Painful Memories to Find Peace in the Present

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“The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.” ~Marianne Williamson

I awoke early one morning, the cries and pleas of my dreams slowly dissipating, and though I could no longer hear or see what was happening, it stayed with me as I drifted back to the real world. I knew this story; I had dreamed a memory, and the remains of it stayed with me in my body.

Like a dark cloud it made me pull my knees into my chest, and it forced salty tears from my closed eyes.  I had dreamed …

Free Yourself From Emotional Debt: Move Beyond Pain from the Past

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“He who is brave is free.” ~Seneca

We all know what debt is. Some of us, most of us, still have a few we’re paying off.

Student loans, car payments, mortgages.

But what about the unseen debts, debts that are invisible to the naked eye but instead live within our hearts?

There are many invisible debts we pay—debts that are alive within us from the past: The father who walked out when we were little, whose approval we’re still seeking. The mother who was over critical, so we overwork ourselves to prove that we’re good enough. The time someone humiliated …

How to Create Emotional Freedom by Setting Healthy Boundaries

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“I’ve discovered that you can’t change people. They can change themselves.” ~Jim Rohn

 “As much I want you to be happy, I’m realizing that I can’t be responsible for your happiness.”

I had never spoken truer words in my life. Even as the tears flowed down my cheeks, I felt a profound sense of freedom and lightness.

My mother suffers from major depressive disorder. For much of my life I truly believed that there was something I could do to bring her out of it. I tried to be the perfect daughter. I minimized my own emotional presence. I did …

Emotionally Closed Off No More – How I’m Healing My Pain and Learning to Love

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“Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed.” ~ Buddha

There’s only one way to survive life. Shut down, or get hurt and die.

Well, that’s what I once believed.

At some point during my childhood I decided that the only way to survive in the world was to shut down and close off my heart. I’m sure given a choice I would have chosen only to avoid the pain of life (not the pleasure), …

Embracing Our Darkness: We Don’t Always Have to Be Happy

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“It is better to be whole than to be good.” ~John Middleton Murray

Discouragement is usually an unwelcome guest. Every time it comes knocking on my door, I try to shoo it away or sweep it under the rug.

In fact, many of us want nothing more than for happiness to be our constant state of being, and have a hard time forgiving ourselves when we falter.

It happens: We can get immersed in the thick of discouragement for days, feeling mopey, downtrodden, physically, mentally, and emotionally “burnt out” and all in all “not ourselves.”

When I am …

Finding Positive Ways to Express Difficult Emotions

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“Never apologize for showing feelings. When you do so, you apologize for the truth.” ~Benjamin Disraeli

Each day, month, or year I want to be something different when I grow up. At some point I want to open up a smoothie truck with a best friend, I want to teach yoga to cancer patients, and I want to travel to Australia and become a bartender just to support myself.

But more so than what I want (or think I want) to be, I know what I am. I am a wife, a sister, a friend, an Egyptian, a listener, …

Emotional Blind Spots: On Feeling Uncomfortable Feelings

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“Feelings or emotions are the universal language and are to be honored. They are the authentic expression of who you are at your deepest place.” ~Judith Wright

On March 12th of 2006 I faced an important decision: life or death? From my perspective, death seemed reasonable, logical, and easy. Life on the other hand was difficult and full of disappointment.

That was the day I realized I had no idea how to be happy or live with my true self. All I knew and felt in my soul was aloneness; an emotional black hole that consumed me.

Being Emotional

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4 Steps to Address How You Really Feel

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“Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed.” ~ Buddha

I am a very emotional person. I suspect I feel things about ten times more intensely than the average person.

When I’m sad, I’m really sad. When I’m stressed, I’m really stressed. When I’m nervous, I’m really nervous.

Some people would call it being dramatic. I simply call it a genuine aspect of my personality.

I’ve noticed that I have this awful habit of masking …

What It Means to Really Take Care of Yourself

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“Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. In the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul.” ~Max Ehrmann

Last year I realized that I lived twenty-eight years without knowing what it really means to love and take care of myself.

In 2010, I took some wonderful, worldly trips—Costa Rica, Bangkok, Taipei—trekking and exploring.

My husband and I bought a second home. I fully engaged myself in the improvements and the creativity of decorating a fresh canvas.

I ran several races, including a half-marathon, and finished well. …

Finding Strengths in Weaknesses

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“Our strength grows out of our weaknesses.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

After writing my last post for Tiny Buddha, 5 Steps to Accept your Weaknesses, I had an intense few days involving an extremely spiritually and emotionally significant relationship that has recently ended, or at least ended in one form.

I found myself sobbing so uncontrollably in my kitchen that I was choking. Each day, there seemed to be another upwelling of grief. When I saw that my beloved ex-partner was potentially interested in someone else, that grief broke through with renewed intensity. These feelings are all normal and to …

4 Tips to Get in Touch with Your Feelings Instead of Burying Them

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“Hope is the feeling that the feeling you have isn’t permanent.” ~Jean Kerr

I’ve just given up smoking. Again. It’s a bad habit that I can’t seem to shake because I’m likely to relapse when I’m stressed.

I try to rationalize my destructive behavior—I don’t smoke heavily, I don’t smoke that much since I stick to rolling tobacco which makes thinner cigarettes, it’s fifteen minutes to myself where nobody will question why I’m taking time to do and think about nothing.

No matter how much I justify my bad habit, I can’t deny that I’m dependent on a bad thing …

On Catching Thoughts Before They Become Emotional Reactions

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“I am not what happens to me. I choose who I become.” ~Carl Jung

Recently I experienced a big shock, the kind that most of us don’t encounter very often.

I was with a friend when I discovered evidence of a physical disaster near my home. I did not, at that time, know any of the details, nor did I know what kind of impact it might have on my own life.

Now, normally, I am a person who likes, even needs, to process my emotional impact verbally. In other words, I really like to talk things out. (What else …