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Posts tagged with “Fear”

You Can Be the Cycle Breaker: 9 Ways to Heal After Childhood Trauma

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“It’s up to us to break generational curses. When they say, ‘It runs in the family,’ you tell them, ‘This is where it runs out.’” ~Unknown

I never even knew what I experienced was trauma. It was my normal. I was born into a world where I had to walk on eggshells, always on high alert for danger.

I held my breath and always did my best to be good and to not cause an eruption of my dad’s temper. He literally controlled my every move through fear. I agreed to anything just to feel safe and to please him.…

How Not Setting Boundaries Serves Our Primal Need for Acceptance

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“When we fail to set boundaries and hold people accountable, we feel used and mistreated.” ~Brené Brown

I used to believe that others didn’t have healthy boundaries. They didn’t know where to draw the line, and I was the victim of overbearing people. People that would always cross the invisible line.

When people crossed that line, it left me feeling uncomfortable, exhausted, and resentful. It felt wrong in my gut, but I never knew how to communicate it or change it until later in life. Lack of boundaries seeped into every part of my life, personal, professional, and everything …

A Simple Plan to Overcome Self-Doubt and Do What You Want to Do

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“Don’t let others tell you what you can’t do. Don’t let the limitations of others limit your vision. If you can remove your self-doubt and believe in yourself, you can achieve what you never thought possible.” ~Roy T. Bennett

Ahh yes, self-doubt. Something that affects every single one of us at different times and at different magnitudes—even those that seem supremely confident.

Why do so many of us experience self-doubt, and how can we overcome it?

On a personal note, I can tell you my self-doubt comes any time I am trying something new. I’ve learned over the years …

How I Stopped Carrying the Weight of the World and Started Enjoying Life

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“These mountains that you are carrying, you were only supposed to climb.” ~Najwa Zebian

During a personal development course, one of my first assignments was to reach out to three friends and ask them to list my top three qualities. It was to help me see myself the way others saw me.

At the time, my confidence was low and I couldn’t truly see myself. I didn’t remember who I was or what I wanted. The assignment was a way to rebuild my self-esteem and see myself from a broader perspective.

As I vulnerably asked and then received the responses, …

5 Ways to Use Movement (Not Exercise) to Support Your Mental Health

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“Nothing is more revealing than movement.” ~Martha Graham

It seems like only yesterday that I was at home with a newborn, a kindergartener, two dogs, and a husband who, just like me, was working from home, when we were thrown into the unthinkable COVID19 pandemic.

It didn’t take long for the stress and tension to build in my body. The feeling of instability, uncertainty, and fear, not to mention the post-partum anxiety, took its toll on my body as it became more rigid, bound, immobile, and frozen.

All the ways I had relied on movement as exercise were taken away, …

How to Release the Fear That Holds You Back and Keeps You Small

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“The purpose of fear is to raise your awareness, not to stop your progress.” ~Steve Maraboli

I used to hate my fear because it scared me. It terrified me that when fear arose, it often felt like it was driving me at full speed toward the edge of a cliff.

And if I were driven off a cliff, I would lose all control, all function, perhaps I would collapse, perhaps I would shatter into a million pieces. I was never totally clear on the details of what would happen if I let the fear get out of control. That’s …

“Old” Isn’t a Bad Word: The Beauty of Aging (Gracefully or Not)

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“Mrs. Miniver suddenly understood why she was enjoying the forties so much better than she had enjoyed the thirties: it was the difference between August and October, between the heaviness of late summer and the sparkle of early autumn, between the ending of an old phase and the beginning of a fresh one.” ~Jan Struther, Mrs. Miniver

As an adolescent, I was always keen on looking and acting older than my age.

As the youngest amongst three, I always felt that my siblings held more power and their grown up lives seemed more glamorous to me. They would prance off …

4 Anxiety-Calming Techniques I Wish I Used When I Freaked Out on a Plane

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“When thinking about life, remember this: No amount of guilt can solve the past, and no amount of anxiety can change the future.” ~Unknown

I was buckled in on a small, twenty-person airplane, and we were heading toward the runway, when I looked out the window and saw the airplane wheel was wobbling.

I gathered my courage, unbuckled my seatbelt, and approached the flight attendant, who told me to sit back down.

“I think there’s something wrong with the wheel,” I said.

He looked out the window and said, “It’s fine.” But then he radioed the pilot, who turned the …

Why People-Pleasers Lie and What We Gain When We Share Our Truth

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“You’re a liar. People-pleasers are liars,” a friend said to me. I felt like I was punched in the gut. “You say yes when you mean no. You say it’s okay when it’s not okay.” My friend challenged me, “In your gentle way, begin to be more honest.”

I believed the lie that pleasing people would make my relationships better. It didn’t.

I decided to take my friend’s challenge to tell the truth. People didn’t have a relationship with me; they had a relationship with another version of someone else. They didn’t know me.

People-pleasing was safe; it was how …

All the Ways I Tried to Numb My Loneliness and What Actually Helped

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“A season of loneliness and isolation is when the caterpillar gets its wings.” ~Mandy Hale

I feel so alone right now. Like, crawling out of my skin, I’ll do anything I can do to not feel this way alone.

I haven’t felt this way in a long time. Thank goodness I have tools to take care of myself. Let me explain.

My earliest childhood memory is my mother’s empty bed. The sheets are white, untucked, and messy.  The duvet cover is loose and hanging halfway on the floor. The room is quiet, there’s no sign of mom, and I …

The Truth About Mr. S.: The Sexual Predator from My High School Band

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TRIGGER WARNING: This post deals with accounts of sexual harassment and assault and may be triggering to some people.

“There can be a deep loneliness that comes from not having a family that has your back. I hope you can find supportive people who show up for you.” ~Laura Mohai

I feel and have felt extreme sadness, anger, isolation, and fear over several sexual harassments and assaults in my life.

The first time I was sexually assaulted I was seven. I was at a friend’s birthday pool party. My friend’s dad put his hand down my swimsuit and grabbed my …

How I Found Peace and Self-Love After a Toxic Relationship

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“Bravery is leaving a toxic relationship and knowing that you deserve better.” ~Unknown

When my marriage ended, it left a huge void that I desperately needed to fill, and quickly.

Along with my divorce came the unbearable feelings of rejection and being unlovable. To avoid these feelings, fill the void, and distract myself, I turned to dating. And it turns out, it was much too soon.

What seemed like a harmless distraction soon became what I needed to feel wanted and loved. This was a way to avoid doing the harder work of learning to love myself instead of needing …

The Childhood Wounds We All Carry and How to Heal Our Pain

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“As traumatized children, we always dreamed that someone would come and save us. We never dreamed that it would, in fact, be ourselves as adults.” ~Alice Little

Like most people, I used to run away from my pain.

I did it in lots of different and creative ways.

I would starve myself and only focus on what I could and couldn’t eat based on calories.

I would make bad choices for myself and then struggle with the consequences, not realizing that I had made any choice at all. It all just seemed like bad luck. Really bad luck.

Or I …

How To Keep Moving Forward When You Feel Like Shutting Down

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“I can’t believe what I’m managing to get through.” ~Frank Bruni

My worst fear was inflicted upon me three months ago: a cancer diagnosis—non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Out of nowhere!

Truth be told though, lots of awful things that happen to us come suddenly out of nowhere—a car accident, suicide, heart attack, and yes, a diagnostic finding. We’re stopped in our tracks, seemingly paralyzed as we go into shock and dissociative mode.

My world as I knew it stopped. It became enclosed in the universe of illness—tiny and limited. I became one-dimensional—a sick patient.

And I went into shock. To the …

The Lies We Tell Ourselves About Our Worth and How I’ve Let Them Go

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“You either walk inside your story and own it or you stand outside and hustle for your worthiness.” Brene Brown

I was shaking and sweating with fear as I stood in front of my graduate professor for the final test of the semester. I was twenty-two years old at the time and felt like a fish out of water in my graduate program. I dreamed of being a professor, studying, and writing, but deep down I thought, “I’m not smart enough. I don’t fit in here.  No one likes me.”

When my religion professor announced that the final wasn’t a …

Free Thich Nhat Hanh Audio Series: Living Without Stress or Fear

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When you think of the teachers who’ve had the greatest impact on your life, who comes to mind?

For me, it’s the calm, the humble, the patient—the people who not only imparted useful life lessons but also embodied their message with their grace and equanimity. People I was fortunate enough to know personally, like my grandmother, and others I never met that brought me clarity and peace from afar, like the inimitable Thich Nhat Hanh.

Thay, as his students called him, was a Vietnamese Zen monk, author, poet, peacemaker, and founder of the “engaged Buddhism” movement—the act of leveraging our …

How I’m Honoring My Values Even Though I Have Conflicting Priorities

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“No matter what kind of stuff you tell the world, or tell yourself, your actions reveal your real values. Your actions show you what you actually want.” ~Derek Sivers

I need to be a productivity rockstar if I stand a chance of accomplishing everything important to me.

There’s a book I want to write, a course I want to create, and a chance to work with an award-winning author that has given me endless projects I want to pursue.

These are exciting, but they’re creating a ton of anxiety in my life.

Why?

Because they’re at odds with being the …

Why You Should Stop Looking for Your Purpose and What to Do Instead

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“The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” ~Pablo Picasso

Twenty years is a long time when you know you’re meant to be doing something, but you don’t quite know what it is or how to go about doing it.

To cut a two-decade story very short, I found the seeds of my purpose when volunteering in a hospital playroom with pediatric cancer patients in Romania one summer when I was twenty years old. And, though I have made many an attempt over the years, I am only now beginning …

How I Stopped Feeling Sorry for Myself and Shifted from Victim to Survivor

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“When we deny our stories, they define us. When we own our stories, we get to write a brave new ending.” ~Brené Brown

There was a time when I felt really sorry for myself. I had good reason to be. My life had been grim. There had been so much tragedy in my life from a young age. I had lost all my grandparents young, lived in a home with alcoholism and domestic abuse, and to top it all off, my dad killed himself.

I could write you a long list of how life did me wrong. I threw myself …

Feeling Burnt Out? How to Slow Down and Reclaim Your Peace

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“Burnout is a sign that something needs to change.” ~Sarah Forgrave

Fifteen years ago, my doctor informed me I was in the early stages of adrenal exhaustion. In no uncertain terms, she warned that if I failed to address the stress I was under, my adrenals might not recover. This was hard to hear, but it forced me to face the fact that eating well, exercising religiously, and keeping up with the latest research on wellness was not enough.

I had to ask myself a defining question that day: Am I ready to go down with the ship?

At the …