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Posts tagged with “feelings”

Now is Not Forever: Weathering Uncomfortable Feelings

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“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” ~Alan Watts

I recently found myself ruminating about a difficult situation at my new workplace. Considering my high-flying, achievement-oriented personality, the recipe for my malcontent was predictable: A supervisor had disagreed with me, and I left work that day feeling melodramatic and like I wanted to quit… that day.

I thought, “I am so misunderstood. No one ‘gets’ what I am doing. I am not cut out for teamwork. Why do I hate working so much? I thought …

How to Know What You’re Really Feeling So You Can Feel Better

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“The more you hide your feelings, the more they show. The more you deny your feelings, the more they grow.” ~Unknown

Throughout my life, I thought of myself as someone who felt too much. I was very gregarious and could easily be consumed by moments of joy and celebration. But when I was alone, I could be overtaken by angry, self-destructive voices that would dominate my mind.

By senior year of high school, I was spending many hours of the day crying, and had taken to pinching and punching myself until I was black and blue.

I felt I needed …

4 Steps to Process Your Emotions So They Don’t Zap Your Energy

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“Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.” ~Elizabeth Gilbert

I felt zapped. Depleted. Drained. Out of gas. And I wasn’t sure why.

  • Enough sleep? Check.
  • Enough exercise? Check.
  • Enough nutritious food and vitamins? Check.
  • Health check-ups and tests up to date? Check and check.
  • Reasonable schedule? Check.

I thought I felt this way because I’d recently had surgery to remove a sizeable tumor.

But that had gone smoothly, and I was fully recovered and back to my regular schedule.

However, there was one thing that I noticed since the surgery: I …

Why Letting Ourselves Feel Bad Is the Key to Feeling Better

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“The more you hide your feelings, the more they show. The more you deny your feelings, the more they grow.” ~Unknown

For as long as I can remember, I have been on a quest to heal myself. From a very young age I can remember feeling different from my peers. I was always painfully shy and paralyzed with insecurity and fear, which left me in a constant state of self-criticism.

Hardships in my young life, including the suicide of my father, left me with the belief that life was just hard.

Unfortunately, I also thought that it wasn’t supposed to …

Setting Emotional Boundaries: Stop Taking on Other People’s Feelings

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“The way you treat yourself sets the standard for others.” ~Sonya Friedman

The longer I stayed on the phone, the more agitated I became. My mother was on the other end, as usual, dumping her emotions on me. I had moved to Los Angeles for graduate school in part to escape all of this—my mother’s unhappiness, my sense of responsibility, the pressure to be perfect.

When I hung up the phone, I felt an overwhelming sense of anger. At the time, I could not (correction: would not) allow myself to admit that I was angry with my mother. I …

A Letter from Your Future Self

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“The place to be happy is here. The time to be happy is now.” ~Robert G. Ingersoll

Dear Past Me,

Remember that day when you thought all was lost? When you thought there was barely any point in carrying on?

The bank account was dangerously low.

You were arguing with everyone close to you.

The roof was leaking.

It felt like everything was a struggle and the so-called abundance of the Universe was nowhere to be seen.

You were going over the mistakes you’d made.

The money you had lost.

The opportunities you had missed.

You were going over angry …

Coping with the Pain of Loneliness After a Breakup

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“Relationships are like glass. Sometimes it’s better to leave them broken than hurt yourself trying to put it back together.” ~Unknown

I am at a phase in my life right now where I’m struggling with loneliness.

Most of the time, I feel a deep sense of disconnection from the world around me and the people I share it with.

The mere fact that I am writing this in the small hours of the morning, deafened by the ear-splitting silence of an empty flat, unable to sleep, simply emphasizes this point to me even harder.

The empty flat in question is …

Why Love Addiction Deprives Us of Love, and How to Let It In

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“What we seek in love is finding someone with whom we feel safe to reveal our true self.” ~Karen Salmansohn

I wasn’t always in a relationship, but I was almost always in love.

I even had crushes in kindergarten. I hated school because my grade school teacher didn’t like me. Maybe my crushes helped me avoid feeling the void, the loneliness, and the sense that I was not of this world, an outcast.

Being in love let me ignore those uncomfortable feelings. Of course, I did not understand any of this at age six. Now I do.

As an …

How We Can Reduce Our Suffering by Feeling Uncomfortable Feelings

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“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but thought about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking.” ~Eckhart Tolle

Just about everyone experiences sorrow at times. I know I do.

The other morning, in fact, I was caught off guard by a very particular sorrow. Nothing happened, per se; but from the moment I awoke, I felt an aching sense of sadness and loss at the fact that my career path has taken me away from the field of mental health counseling.

As I became aware of my sorrow, it filled my heart and mind like …

Hang Up the Superhero Cape: We Don’t Have to Do It All Alone

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“When we can no longer change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” ~Viktor Frankl

In the spring of 2008 when my son was only seven months old, I received a text message from his stay-at-home dad while I was at work. The text read, “He’s in the crib.” I did not respond because those five words said everything I needed to know.

My son’s father had left us, and worse, he had left my son alone in his crib. I was at work fifteen miles away. 

Adrenaline is an interesting thing. I don’t remember many details about that …

When You’re at the End of Your Rope: 7 Tips to Help Yourself

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

“Life’s challenges are not supposed to paralyze you, they’re supposed to help you discover who you are.” ~Bernice Johnson Reagan

During my first year away at college, I struggled with depression and anxiety. I felt broken, hopeless, and lost, and I didn’t know how to cope.

At times, I thought about jumping out of my fourth floor dorm room window.

Thankfully, I didn’t.

It all began on the day I moved into my dorm in August of 2008. My parents took me …

When Trying to Be Positive Brings You Down

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“Serenity comes when you trade expectations for acceptance.” ~Unknown

How many of us have caught ourselves feeling as though we’re imposters when we’re trying to talk about a difficult situation in a positive light? We’re often fed the idea that how we feel is in how we decide to see life, which, I agree with; however, sometimes I think that idea gets taken to a deceptive extreme.

In the midst of one of my mini-meltdowns the other day, I called my friend and told her what had been going on in my head the last few months.

“It’s sounds as …

How to Practice Self-Compassion: 5 Tips to Stop Being Down on Yourself

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“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.” ~Jack Kornfield

I never wanted to see a therapist. I imagined settling onto the storied couch and seeing dollar signs appear in concerned eyes as I listed the family history of mental illness, addiction, and abuse. I feared I’d be labeled before I’d ever been heard.

But after experiencing the emotional shock of witnessing a murder, I knew I needed a space to grieve. So I gathered all of my courage and laid myself bare to a very nice woman who had Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements on her …

Why Letting Yourself Feel Broken is the Key to Feeling Whole

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“Life always waits for some crisis to occur before revealing itself at its most brilliant.” ~Paul Coelho

I spent my twenty-fifth birthday crying alone at the foot of a mountain. While I had always found solace in spending time by myself, in that moment, I did not recognize my “self.”  Without my self, I had nothing.

I was utterly alone.

Three weeks earlier, a man was shot just feet away from my front door. My then-boyfriend and I performed CPR until an ambulance arrived, but the man had been killed on impact. The police left my home at 3 a.m.; …

Good News: Bad Moods Don’t Have to Be So Bad

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“Most of the shadows in life are caused by standing in our own sunshine.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

How many times have you heard “Follow your heart” or “Let emotion be your guide”?

Too many to count, I’d bet.

It’s generally good advice; it’s certainly wiser to follow your own feelings than to blindly do what other people think you should do.

But reading into your emotions can also lead you astray.

You see, you are always feeling your thinking. You are not necessarily always feeling “the truth,” or even your own personal truth.

Every emotion, feeling, or mood you experience …

Embodied Presence: Find Freedom from Your Thoughts and Emotions

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“To be alive is to totally and openly participate in the simplicity and elegance of here and now.” ~Donald Altman

Embodied presence probably sounds superfluous. How else would we be present but in the body? If we leave our bodies, then we are by definition deceased. No longer present.

The simplicity of this embodied presence idea belies its depth though. The issue isn’t that I’m ever literally disembodied, but that I’m often unaware of my body-mind connection to the point that I’m not sufficiently mindful of the moment.

I know I’m not unique for this. We all do this. …

7 Steps to Prevent Getting Stuck in an Emotion

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“Life is a process of becoming. A combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.” ~Anais Nin

I bought an ice cream cake for my family to thank them for giving me the time and space to write the first draft of my novel. My husband took photos. I selected my favorite shot as the wallpaper on my computer to remind me of this milestone.

I was happy and joyous for a week. The second week I fell into …

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 …

Finding Peace: Take Power Away from Your Thoughts and Emotions

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“Slow down and everything you are chasing will come around and catch you.” ~John De Paola

My almost three year old, Willow, is obsessed with playing doctor.

She lies on the couch, hands down at her sides. She hands me a small flashlight and a toy frying pan (which I’m told to pretend is a stethoscope) and orders, “Check me out, Doctor Mommy!”

She methodically points out every scratch, scrape, bruise, and freckle on her body. She tells me how much snot she feels in her nose and how many times she coughed, sneezed, and hiccupped that day so that …

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 …