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Posts tagged with “healing”

He Broke My Heart But Taught Me These 5 Things About Love

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“Sometimes the only closure you need is the understanding that you deserve better.” ~Trent Shelton 

I’ll never forget the day we met.

It was a classic San Francisco day. The sky was a perfect cerulean blue. The sun sparkled brightly.

I ventured from my apartment in the Haight to Duboce Park to enjoy the Saturday. Dogs chased balls in the dog park. Friends congregated on the little hill. They giggled, listened to music, and ate picnic food. Kites flew high in the breeze. Adults tossed Frisbees in their t-shirts and bare feet.

And I sat, bundled up in my scarf, …

If You’re Insecure and Afraid of Rejection Like Me…

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“How brave the moon shines in her skin; outnumbered by the stars.” ~Angie Welland-Crosby

I have this reoccurring dream where I am about to teach a yoga class. I stand to teach, and no one is paying any attention to me. They are all distracted or in deep conversation with one another and have no interest in engaging in the class.

As I begin, one by one the students get up and leave. I am mortified and discouraged, though I continue to teach anyway.

I wake up from the dream with a sinking feeling in my stomach and heaviness in …

What If There’s Beauty on the Other Side of Your Pain?

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“The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” ~Albert Einstein

“I don’t want to live anymore. I don’t want to be here. I can’t do this. It hurts too much. It’s too hard.”

I’m curious how many times I’ve heard these words over my lifetime. From different people, ages, genders, ethnicities, and walks of life. The words the same, the heaviness no different from one to the next. Hopelessness has a specific tone attached to it. Flat, low, and empty.

Being the child of a parent who committed suicide, there is a …

Healing from the Conflicting Loss of a Difficult Parent

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“Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.” ~Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

I had a tumultuous and interesting relationship with my father. He was a strong, proud man in his spirit as well as in his physical appearance. In my younger years, I …

Tips from a Former Addict: How I Made a Change for Good

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I was a drug addict. Yes, I did it all. No, my childhood was not full of abuse, I was actually a pretty lucky kid, and I had it no worse and no better than anyone else, except for maybe some “daddy issues.”

I am not much for blame. I know who was smoking, sniffing, and popping, and it wasn’t the bad angel on my shoulder who made me do it, it was just me.

I can give you the exact reason why I started doing drugs. I was afraid to just be myself, simple enough. Everyone else’s thoughts …

The Unexpected Impact of Growing Up with a Difficult Mother

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“Difficulties in your life do not come to destroy you, but to help you realise your hidden potential and power, let difficulties know that you too are difficult.” ~Abdul Kalam

Do you sometimes daydream that your mom is gone, and all your troubles disappear along with her?

I used to imagine that, too.

When Mom was in intensive care, swaying between life and death, I sat outside, shell-shocked, trembling all over my body, trying to comprehend the doctor’s words: “Her condition is critical, and only time will show if she will make it. I’m sorry.”

For a moment, I …

Hate Your Life? 4 Ways to Boost Your Happiness

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“Hope is being able to see that there is light despite all of the darkness.” ~Desmond Tutu

I hate my life. Does this statement ring true to you at all? Do you feel like you’re at rock bottom? The good news is, it might not be as bad as you fear.

I spent a lot of time feeling afraid of everything.

I had an emotional collapse, and it made life suddenly seem terrifying. What had happened? Had the town I was living in changed? Had my country suddenly become different?

No, I had changed the filter through which I saw …

If You Think There’s Something Wrong with You…

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The root cause of suffering for many of us is believing that there’s something’s wrong with us. Psychiatrists’ and therapists’ offices are filled with people who are carrying this false belief, most often stemming from traumatic or painful childhood experiences, or even people telling us this directly.

Sometimes we inferred this idea because we were treated badly as children and/or we didn’t get our physical or emotional needs met. Perhaps we were called selfish or bad because we “asked for too much,” or we were told we couldn’t have what we wanted because we didn’t “earn or deserve it.”

Maybe …

Healing from Abuse and Reclaiming My Dreams

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TRIGGER WARNING: This post mentions sexual abuse and may be triggering to some people.

“Along the way I stopped into a coffee shop. All around me normal, everyday city types were going about their normal, everyday affairs…In spite of which—or, rather, all the more because— here I was, sitting in this coffee shop, drinking my coffee, feeling a desperate loneliness. I alone was the outsider. I had no place here… Here I had no ties to anyone. Fact is, I’d come to reclaim myself.” ~Haruki Murakami

“You don’t have any goals.”

“I wondered why someone your age and …

How Marijuana Was Great for My Anxiety and Why I Stopped Using It

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“When solving problems, dig at the root instead of just hacking at the leaves.” ~Anthony J. D’Angelo

This is an account of my experience using marijuana as a device to help my anxiety, why I’m glad I had it, and why I no longer need it.

This story isn’t an advocation for or against smoking pot. It’s a story to shed some insight into how and why it helped certain ailments and my journey to lasting change without it.

How Smoking Pot Helped My Anxiety

For most of my life I was a closet anxiety sufferer.

That’s mostly because …

Healing PTSD One Breath and One Day at a Time

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“Recovering from PTSD is being fragile and strong at the same time. It’s a beautiful medley of constantly being broken down and pieced together. I am a painting almost done to completion, beautiful but not quite complete.” ~Kate J. Tate

I never considered myself as a trauma survivor.

I didn’t think I had something as severe as PTSD. I reserved that diagnosis to those who suffered from things far worse than me.

It felt dramatic and attention-seeking to label myself as a “trauma survivor.”

First of all, what is trauma? The term tends to be loosely thrown around, and …

How to Befriend Our Unhealthy Survival Mechanisms

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“Wounded children have a rage, a sense of failed justice that burns in their souls. What do they do with that rage? Since they would never harm another, they turn that rage inward. They become the target of their own rage.” ~Woody Haiken

Survival mechanisms are ways of being that we picked up along the way to help us cope with what was happening in our reality.

Getting mad at ourselves for doing what we do only promotes self-hate. We’re not bad or wrong; in fact, we’re pretty damn intelligent. We found ways to help us soothe our traumas, hurt, …

Free Online Collective Trauma Summit (Starts 9/22)

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When I started Tiny Buddha, one of my main goals was to help us all heal the traumas that haunt us and hold us back in life. In much the same way that our personal traumas hinder us each individually, our collective trauma adversely affects the whole world. And healing that trauma is critical for the future of humanity and the planet.

If, like me, you want to do your part to help us all heal the wounds that are passed down through generations, I highly recommend checking out the Collective Trauma Summit, a free, 10-day online event starting …

I Am a Survivor, Not a Victim, and I’m Grateful for My Pain

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

“Emotional pain cannot kill you but running from it can. Allow. Embrace. Let yourself feel. Let your yourself heal.” ~Vironika Tugaleva

I was nine years old, sitting on the couch with my dad, watching a Very Brady Christmas (on my sister’s birthday, December 20th) when he first molested me. Terror, confusion, disbelief, and shame comingled to create a cocktail that would poison me for many years to come.

We grew up in a family that, from the outside, seemed …

How to Be Your Own Best Friend When You’re Grieving

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“This is a moment of suffering. Suffering is part of life. May I be kind to myself in this moment. May I give myself the compassion I need.” ~Kristen Neff

Your best friend just lost her husband and her mother within five days of one another. Her husband was terminally ill. Her mother was eighty-six. You don’t know how she is going to get through this. You know that she was assuming that after her husband died, she would console herself by spending time with her mother. But that is not how it is going to work out.

Your best …

How to Survive a Breakup with an Addict and Heal Your Heart

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“The positive cannot exist without the negative.” ~Alan Watts

My heart was empty. It had never felt that empty before. Sometimes I felt a gap gnawing at my chest making everything around me feel like half of a whole. I felt like a piece of me had died.

I painted my childhood bedroom grey that summer, picking out the color carefully after taping paint samples on the wall and pondering them for hours.

The old color gave me a headache; it glowed neon green and looked dirty now from years of feet on the walls. Hidden above the moldings, I …

For People Who Look in the Mirror and Cringe

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“Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.” ~Brené Brown

When I was fourteen years old, I vividly remember the first time I put my fingers down my throat and made myself puke.

I remember feeling fat, ugly, unworthy, and like I was not good enough. I felt as if I had no control and I was unable to effectively process the strong emotions I was feeling. Binging and purging allowed me to temporarily release these feelings, to numb them out, and created a fallacy of control …

Why Joy Is Important for Healing Developmental Trauma

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“We all have everything we need within us to create our fullest potential.” ~Abraham Maslow

Did you grow up with a critical, distant, or ignorant mother?

She probably made sure that your physical needs were covered, but she never noticed or understood your emotional needs. If she was anything like my mum, she may even have shamed you for having them!

You’re an adult now, and you have everything you need to be happy. So why aren’t you? Instead, you feel unworthy, disconnected, and lonely even when you’re with people you love. There’s this constant emptiness inside that makes …

My Cat Had Cancer and Taught Me How to Cope with Illness

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“A cat purring on your lap is more healing than any drug in the world, as the vibrations you are receiving are of pure love and contentment.” ~St. Francis of Assisi

We all know what it is like to be sick. At some point in our lives we get the flu or a bad cold, but we know the course—get lots of rest and before you know it you are as good as new. But for some of us, we live with chronic illness.

Chronic illness brings with it day-to-day symptoms, the ones you cannot get away from. Coping with …

How Being in a Toxic Relationship Changed My Life for the Better

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“Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing monkey bars.  You have to let go at some point in order to move forward.” ~C.S. Lewis

My ex and I split up about five years ago. We had been married for seventeen years, and after that long, I figured we were home free, as far as lasting marriages go. Needless to say, when it happened, I was devastated. Over all those years of being a couple, I had lost a big part of myself. Without that relationship, who was I anymore?

I was terrified of being alone, which led …