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Posts tagged with “self-compassion”

How I Stopped Worrying All the Time and Started Feeling Good About Life

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“We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are.” ~Anais Nin

When I was young, I used to stare out into the big, blue sky and ask, “Is this really the right place?” “Did they drop me off on the wrong planet?” I wondered.

It felt like I didn’t fit in or belong. Things seemed so much easier for others. They moved forward with ease even when something was painful, while I felt an arrow pierce my heart every time a loved one was in pain, or a difficult situation arose.

When I looked around, I …

How to Better Manage Stress So Little Things Don’t Set You Off

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“It’s not stress that kills us, it’s our reaction to it.” ~Hans Selye

I was driving home from work, minding my own business, when a car cut in front of me.

Pretty common in Sydney traffic, right? Normally, I would just brush it off.

But not today. For some reason I couldn’t explain, that simple event set me off. I got so irritated that I pressed both my hands on the horn and started shouting at the other driver—who just gave me the finger and continued on his merry way.

That’s when I lost it. How dare he do something …

How to Overcome Ultra-Independence and Receive Love and Support

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“Ultra independence is a coping mechanism we develop when we’ve learned it’s not safe to trust love or when we are terrified to lose ourselves in another. We aren’t meant to go it alone. We are wounded in relationship and we heal in relationship.” ~Rising Woman

Do you feel like you have to do everything on your own?

Is it difficult for you to ask for and receive help in fear of being let down?

Have you ever heard the expression “Ultra-independence may be a trauma response”?

If this is you, I get it; that was me too.

Please know …

Ending My Toxic Relationship with My Mother Was an Act of Self-Love

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“It’s okay to let go of those who couldn’t love you. Those who didn’t know how to. Those who failed to even try. It’s okay to outgrow them, because that means you filled the empty space in you with self-love instead. You’re outgrowing them because you’re growing into you. And that’s more than okay, that’s something to celebrate.” ~Angelica Moone

I was taught to love my family and to just accept the love they give. With the passage of time and the dawning of maturity, I began to doubt this kind of unquestioning love. The chronic emotional and mental stress …

Feeling Burnt Out? Meet Toxic Productivity & Grind Culture with Rest

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“Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” ~Audre Lorde

When you hear the word “productive,” you likely think of something positive: busting through that work assignment, making your house sparkly clean, or crushing your hobby.

Productivity is what we all aim for, right? On workdays and even on our days off, we seek to make something happen.

Grinding and hustling are seen as admirable, and something to work toward, always.

If we fall short, we beat ourselves up, and sometimes even drag ourselves off the couch to force …

4 Powerful Lessons I’ve Learned from Grief Since My Mom Died Suddenly

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“Losing my mother at such an early age is the scar of my soul. But I feel like it ultimately made me into the person I am today. I understand the journey of life. I had to go through what I did to be here.” ~Mariska Hargitay

At 6:07 pm on July 18, 2020, I was sitting on the couch with my boyfriend. It was a Saturday night, and I had canceled plans with my friends because I had a migraine. I had eaten dinner already, and I was in my pajamas, watching TV. My phone rang—my dad. “I’ll call …

Why I Stopped Measuring My Self-Worth and Trying to Prove Myself

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“You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anyone.” ~Maya Angelou

How do you measure your self-worth? By the salary you make each year? By the number of lines on your resume? By the amount of people who follow you on social media?

Now what if you never had to measure your self-worth again? That is what I want to do.

I grew up as a gifted kid with high expectations to boot, always pushing myself to meet them. I earned the best grades I could, secured a full-ride scholarship to a local university, and soon enough …

How I Recognized My Fear of Failure and How I’m Mindfully Overcoming It

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“The only way to ease our fear and be truly happy is to acknowledge our fear and look deeply at its source. Instead of trying to escape from our fear, we can invite it up to our awareness and look at it clearly and deeply.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

My daughter began taking tumbling classes a week before her eighth birthday. She had been dancing since the age of three, and those classes included instructions for cartwheels and roundoffs. The harder stuff, like the back walkover, required tumbling or gymnastics classes, and she wanted the chance to be able to show …

Are You Highly Emotionally Reactive? You May Be Stuck in Survival Mode

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“Survival mode is supposed to be a phase that helps save your life. It is not meant to be how you live.” ~Michele Rosenthal

Childhood is the most cherished time for many. However, nobody gets to adulthood unscathed. We all go through incidents with our friends, family, and at school or otherwise that leave us feeling emotionally bruised or scarred.

Growing up in a household where my parents were busy raising three kids and working hard to better their economic status, somewhere along the way I felt neglected. Not that they did anything intentionally, but I was often …

Why I Blamed Myself for My Ex’s Suicide (and Why It’s Not My Fault)

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“No amount of guilt can change the past and no amount of worrying can change the future.” ~Umar Ibn Al Khattab

I don’t remember the exact day the message came through. It was from my son, Julian, and he needed to talk to me. It sounded pretty serious. He never really needs to talk to me.

His father was found dead earlier that week. He’d hung himself.

While this news hardly affected Julian at all, it hit me like a ton of bricks, and I cried.

Our Marriage

We met in a taxi thirty-three years ago. He was the driver, …

How Perfectionism and Anxiety Made Me Sick and What I Wish I Knew Sooner

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“Perfectionism is the exhausting state of pretending to know it all and have it all together, all the time. I’d rather be a happy mess than an anxious stress case who’s always trying to hide my flaws and mistakes.” ~Lori Deschene 

“That’s not how you do it!” I slammed the door as I headed outside, making sure my husband understood what an idiot he was. He’d made the appalling mistake of roasting potatoes for Thanksgiving instead of making stuffing.

He was cooking while I studied, trying to make sure I got a semblance of a holiday. We lived away from …

What Your Anger Is Trying to Tell You and How to Hear It

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“When we embrace anger and take good care of our anger, we obtain relief. We can look deeply into it and gain many insights.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

It just took a few words from my husband before I felt my body move from calm to a boiling cauldron of rage. My whole being was alight, in flames. Energy felt like it was moving through me and shattering everything inside me.

I hated it. Anger is so intense, and so big, that most of us can’t bear to feel it in our bodies.

I wanted to do a lot of …

The Simplest Ways to Find Calm in the Middle of Life’s Constant Chaos

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“When you are resting because you are worn out, you need to remember that you are not wasting time. You are doing exactly what you need to do. You are recovering.” ~Unknown

I woke up at 3am when I heard my alarm ring. I slowly pulled my arm away from my son, who was half holding my arm and half lying on it, so that he didn’t wake up. I tip-toed out of bed while my husband and my son were sleeping.

My eyes ached and were blurry from sleep deprivation. My head felt like I was floating in …

How I Broke My Stress Eating Habit When Nothing Else Worked

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“The pain seems so much more difficult than the cookies. But it’s not. The pain covered in cookies becomes pain covered in fat covered in more pain.” ~Brooke Castillo

Do you ever eat when you’re stressed, sad, tired, alone?

Bag of chips after a hard day?

Ordering the take-out when your partner’s away?

I did.

Seven years ago, my newborn baby cried every evening.

I’d feed her, change her, and blow raspberries on her neck. Still, she screamed—like a smoke alarm you couldn’t stop.

I tried singing to her, burping her, begging her…

I felt useless, desperate.

In my journalism …

Why I Felt Broken and Unworthy of Love and What Changed Everything

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“How people treat other people is a direct reflection of how they feel about themselves.” ~Paulo Coelho

He used to tell me no one else would love me because I’m damaged goods.

And I believed him.

Because I received messages for most of my life that there was something wrong with me.

I wasn’t good enough. Too sensitive. Too weak. Too sickly. Too different.

I realize now those messages were passed on to me by concerned parents who saw in me parts of themselves they didn’t fully accept.

And those messages were from parents whose own parents had used criticism …

How I’ve Eased My Anxiety by Being More Present: 4 Practices to Try

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“Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.” ~Oprah Winfrey

In 2012, during my community college years, I began to experience mild anxiety.

I assume it was the stress and fear that came with maintaining a good GPA in hope of transferring to a well-known university, alongside deciding what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Or perhaps it was because of the time I knew I’d wasted slacking in high school to fit in with what I was surrounded by and to …

How to Increase Your Sense of Control and Boost Your Resilience

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“You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated. In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still come out of it.” ~Maya Angelou

When I look back, I am amazed at how differently I dealt with adversity the first few decades of my life.

Growing up in a stressful home primed me to experience life with caution. Whether it was being afraid of physical harm, loneliness, or failure, I’ve lived my life with an exaggerated fight-flight response to everything. Adversity …

Who Are You Protecting? Why Telling Your Story Is Powerful

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“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ~Maya Angelou

Throughout my childhood experiences I did what every child does and rejected parts of myself. It makes sense because kids depend on adults for survival, so I was in no position to reject my parents. But as an adult I feel it is now my job to reclaim those parts of myself.

While I had two parents that loved me and what I’d describe as a normal childhood, nonetheless I became hyper-attuned to others, over-sensitive to criticism, and a perfectionist, particularly under stress. It led to …

How I Get Through Hard Times Using Curiosity, Compassion, and Challenge

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“Sometimes the worst things that happen in our lives put us on the path to the best things that will ever happen to us.” ~Unknown

Until I was thirty-seven, I thought I’d led a pretty charmed life: I had a supportive family and good friends, I’d done well academically, always got the jobs I’d applied for, and met and married the perfect man for me.

In 2013, when I was thirty-five weeks pregnant with my second child, I was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. My baby was induced at thirty-seven weeks, and my chemo started ten days later. In …

I Thought Meditation Would Fix My Anxiety – Here’s Why It Wasn’t Enough

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“Your mind, emotions, and body are instruments and the way you align and tune them determines how well you play life.” ~Harbhajan Singh Yogi

The earliest memory of my anxiety was at ten years old in fifth grade.

I remember it so vividly because in middle school the bus came at 6:22am exactly in the morning.

Each night I would look at my Garfield clock and think, “If I fall asleep now, I’ll get five hours of sleep…. If I fall asleep now, I’ll get four hours of sleep… If I fall asleep now, I’ll get three hours of sleep…”…