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Posts tagged with “painful”

The Magic of Rewriting Our Most Painful Stories

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“When you bring peace to your past, you can move forward to your future.” ~Unknown

It amazes me how things that happen in our childhood can greatly impact our adult lives. I learned the hard way that I was living my life with a deep wound in my heart.

My father was a very strict man with a temper when I was little, starting when I was around seven years old.

He had a way of making me feel like all my efforts were not enough. If I scored an 8 in a math exam, he would say, “Why 8 …

3 Practices That Help Ease the Pain of Being Highly Empathetic

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“I do not ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.” ~Walt Whitman

Empathy is the ability to put yourself in another’s experience and understand with depth the gravity of their situation. In general, I believe the world needs more empathy.

But I’ve learned over the course of my twenty-nine years that sometimes being a highly empathetic person is incredibly painful. And sometimes too much of a good thing is a bad thing.

Hearing stories of the pain that people experience can be extra painful when your mind tries to carry their pain around …

5 Things You Need to Tell Yourself After a Painful Breakup

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Have you ever experienced a breakup or divorce but still loved the other person you were saying goodbye to?

I met my ex-girlfriend on a rooftop in Istanbul. I had just sold everything I owned to travel the world, and she was a tour leader in Asia.

She was everything I had been searching for: beautiful, confident, and funny. I followed her to India and China. She followed me to Australia. When the money and visas ran out, we moved back to Canada, found an apartment, got a cat, and shared a strong, healthy relationship for over five years.

And …

The Key to Breaking Painful, Unhealthy Relationship Patterns

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“Forgiveness is just another name for freedom.” ~Byron Katie

Aside from the fact that I was born on Groundhog Day, I didn’t know why I kept falling into the same relationship patterns, which inevitably led to heart-crushing breakups.

I knew that I had a deep capacity to love, or so I thought, but it somehow wasn’t enough. I always ended up either feeling taken for granted or fighting desperately for my partner’s attention after the initial attraction phase wore off.

I couldn’t help becoming someone else, someone I thought I needed to be in order to avoid being abandoned. …

Getting Over a Painful Experience

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Source: Healthy Place

9 Things to Tell Yourself When You’re Afraid to End a Relationship

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“F-E-A-R has two meanings: ‘Forget Everything And Run’ or ‘Face Everything And Rise.’ The choice is yours.” ~Zig Ziglar

No matter how old I get, no matter how experienced I become, ending a relationship is agonizing.

It represents a loss, and losses hurt.

Deep down, I know if I go through with it, I’ll feel freer—well, not right away, but in a little while anyway—but I’d rather crawl under a rock and ignore the whole thing.

When I was a teen, I went out with a guy who had a major crush on me, although I wasn’t attracted to him. …

Accepting, Feeling, and Releasing Painful Emotions

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“Eventually you will come to realize that love heals everything, and love is all there is.” ~Gary Zukav

Last year I developed some unexplained symptoms that could be likened to IBS, Chron’s disease, or even morning sickness (although I wasn’t pregnant, so there was no promise of a baby to make it all worth it).

I had no idea what caused it, why it was there, or what to do about it.

This shook me because I’d always had a strong intuitive connection with my body and I had always been healthy, but now when I asked my body a …

Releasing Painful Memories to Live More Fully in the Present

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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

For thirteen years I’ve lived a high-risk lifestyle that focuses very much on the here and now, because I’m an entrepreneur, and that means making lots of fast decisions that affect the future.

It took a while for me to develop confidence in myself, as we tend to doubt ourselves much more than other people might doubt us. Our thoughts form our doubts, so I knew I had to do something to move forward from the thoughts …

How Painful Relationships Can Be The Best Teachers

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“Sometimes the wrong choices bring us to the right places.” ~Unknown

“This is it,” I thought. I finally found the man I had been waiting for.

Of course, it had taken me thirty-nine years and a painful divorce from my husband of ten years. But that was all worth it, I told myself, because it had led me to the man who seemed to see, understand, and love me the way I had always hoped someone would.

Things were blissful in beginning. We made breakfasts together, took romantic vacations to exotic locations, we fantasized about buying vacation houses. Our developing …

The Power of Silence: How to Free Yourself from Painful Thoughts

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“Within you there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at anytime and be yourself.” ~Hermann Hesse

As a child, I hated when someone told me to sit still and be quiet, and rightly so. I was young and full of energy; every minute of being still and silent was a minute of missing out on this magnificent life.

Then, as I grew older and entered into teenage and young adult years, it grew into a fear with a capital “F” of being still and silent; for as soon as I was quiet and still, the …

Why Bad Things Happen to Good People: How Is This Supporting You?

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“This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival… Be grateful for whatever comes. Because each has been sent
 as a guide from beyond.” ~Rumi

Yesterday my boyfriend’s father told me that he doesn’t believe that everything happens for a reason. He explained, “Where I can’t get on board is, if that’s true, then why do bad things happen to good people?”

It touches close to home for their entire family because not only does one of their sons’ girlfriends have a rare and terminal form of cancer, she met their son because he successfully removed a …

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 …

Waking Up and Forgetting a Bad Day

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“Life is inherently risky. There is only one big risk you should avoid at all costs, and that is the risk of doing nothing.” ~Denis Waitley

Yesterday was a bad day.

My husband and I got really close to buying a car before we walked away—again. This time it was because it was above our budget (with taxes), because the current owners didn’t have the title (their bank did), and because our own car broke down on the way to trying to buy the new car (didn’t see that one coming).

I was fine about the ordeal yesterday, seeing …

Living in the Now When It’s Stressful: 4 Mindfulness Tips

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“If you worry about what might be, and wonder what might have been, you will ignore what is.” ~Unknown

A few weeks ago, I learned that my beloved dog, Bella, had become ill with kidney disease—a condition that will most likely not allow her to live longer than a year. I was devastated when I heard this news.

At only eight years old, Bella didn’t seem old enough to be so sick, let alone be a year (or less) away from dying. Coping with her condition and the impending loss has been incredibly difficult—nearly impossible at times—but amid all of …