The moment we pick something up, our brain starts asking: How can I get better at this? How can I optimize this? Is this a productive use of my Saturday? The result? We never actually relax.
Stop Optimizing Your Joy
Grieving Life Transitions
Change can be exciting, a chance to start over and experience new opportunities and challenges. We are often taught and expected to celebrate these transitions. So it can be confusing when we feel emotions other than joy or excitement.
Healing Negative Body Image
Many of us have complicated relationships with our bodies. For some, their body is a safe haven or a comfortable space where they are free to be and celebrate themselves. For others, the body is a source of disappointment, dissatisfaction, discomfort, and even self-hatred.
Building a Life Around Values
Values are principles that motivate and inspire you. They often reflect your passions or what you care about, and can be a driving force in shifting behavior toward more purposeful living.
How To Set Goals Without Pressure
When we think about goals, we often default to familiar categories: working out more, eating differently, and being more productive. These can be meaningful goals, but they tend to fall apart when they’re too vague or disconnected from who we actually are.
What Is Complex PTSD?
You've probably heard of PTSD — It tends to be discussed in connection with a specific, overwhelming event, something clearly identifiable that the nervous system struggles to recover from. Complex PTSD (or C-PTSD) is chronic and talked about less often, even though it affects many people whose experiences don’t fit that single-event narrative.
Breaking The Self-Doubt Spiral
When we experience disappointing responses to our efforts, it’s tempting to make that mean something about how unskilled we are, how incompetent we must be, or even how unlovable or undeserving of a person we feel we are. We tell ourselves a story that if we had just worked a little harder, or said the right thing, or “mastered” the extremely simple art of toasting toast, then we would receive a more favorable response and thus, feel better about ourselves.
The Inner Orchestra of Parts
Do you ever have “mixed feelings” or experience several different emotions all at once in response to one pertinent issue or life stressor? In these moments, does it sometimes feel like you’re sitting around a chaotic dining table with all of your most opinionated or eclectic family members talking about controversial topics like politics, social issues, simulation theory, flat-earth rhetoric or what kind of bagel is objectively most delicious? You may have just encountered the cacophony of your various inner parts, or your Internal Family System.
The You That Had to Survive
When survival quiets down, what’s left can feel unfamiliar. It’s strange to not always be scanning for danger. Strange to have choices instead of reflexes. Strange to realize that peace can feel unsafe when you’ve never had it before. This is the part of healing no one warns you about, the part that’s less “liberation” and more “relearning how to live.”