My bag only gets stuck on the door handle when I’m having a bad day. Everyone is super annoying when I’m grumpy. My friend’s irritating boyfriend breathes too loudly. When I’m feeling happy it’s easier to find joy in the smaller everyday moments. Does my inner monologue resonate with you?
Shame can be one of the most painful and overpowering emotions in the human experience. It can feel intense, overwhelming, and really hard to talk about. Some people believe both guilt and shame are useful emotions that keep us aligned with our values.
When it comes to the holiday season, food is often at the center of the festivities. Throughout history, food has been one of the primary representations of culture, class, comfort, family, and love. With so much food quite literally on the table, it can be easy to fall into whatever habits you may have around food or body image. Whatever your pattern or struggle, Intuitive Eating could be a welcome practice this holiday season.
Whether your loss is recent or something you’ve carried for years, this season can make it especially hard to feel the joy and rest everyone seems to talk about or expect. It can also be hard to identify when grief emerges as it can take on many forms, often showing up quietly at first. When grief rises like this, it can help to shift from resisting it to making space for it. Here are five ways to let go of the metaphorical tug-of-war rope and gently manage grief this holiday season
Emotional safety is the core foundation in relationships. It’s vital for building trust, vulnerability and intentional connection. This foundation allows you to show up authentically in your relationships, and it also allows you to do so without fear of being judged or rejected.
The “double-edged sword” is the concept that the same qualities and characteristics about your personality that make you kickass at work, can also hurt you in your personal life. The very thing that makes you so successful at work can also get the way in your intimate relationships.
As an Associate Marriage and Family Therapist and someone who constantly seeks growth and understanding of the human condition, I find that breaking down boundary setting into three components is a useful way to guide clients through the process.
The three steps are: Identification, Assertion, and Enforcement.
Step 1– Identify Your Boundaries
How do you build a home without a blueprint? How do you know where to place the windows for others to look in through, or the doors to let them inside? How solid is the foundation and the support of the walls protecting you inside? In order to set boundaries, we need to know what our boundaries are! I like to break down boundaries into physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, time-related… the list can go on! Once I have identified the various levels of boundaries, I connect to my intuition and ask myself questions such as, “How would I like to feel in the presence of others?”, “What are my limits?”, “How do I want to be talked to?”, “How much of my time am I willing to give without sacrificing my own well-being?”, etc. Once I have clearly defined my personal boundaries, I have more clarity on how to communicate them to others.
If a friend came to you for advice about how to move forward in a relationship that was causing them continual distress and pain, what advice would you give them? If you’ve been in therapy before, you’d probably encourage them to start by communicating their feelings. If that doesn’t work, setting boundaries would most likely be the next course of action. If the boundaries were not respected and your friend continued to be hurt, you would start to hint at ending the relationship. This advice feels relatively straightforward in a romantic or companion relationship. But what happens if the relationship that is causing continual distress and pain is with a parent? Does the course of action change? This very question comes up in therapy sessions with adult children regularly, yet rarely without some sense of guilt or shame. In reality, around 27% of adults experience family estrangement that either they or another family member initiates (Karl Pillemer, Fault Lines). So much of the stigma surrounding family estrangement is based upon the assumption that our parents being in our lives is always the best option for our mental health. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. If you are an adult child struggling with having an estranged relationship with a parent, here are some important things to remember:
I often assign a gratitude practice to clients that are experiencing depression, but I have noticed that sometimes it backfires. When we are depressed, we notice negative things even more than the average person. This means that a depressed person would have to work even harder than a non-depressed person to absorb positive stimuli in their environment!
We know that people experiencing depression are often more tired, have less ability to focus and concentrate, lack motivation, and also spend a lot of their time feeling like a failure. So asking a depressed person to work so much harder to identify positive things, is sort of like asking a person who has never gone on a jog in their life to go run a marathon tomorrow.
This is all to say that sometimes, gratitude doesn’t work.
Do you ever find yourself lacking motivation or feeling as if you’re just going about your days in auto-mode? I know I definitely do, and increasingly so these past couple of years!
Throughout the past two years many of us have unwittingly found ourselves in an ongoing state of existing vs. living. Existing is a state of numbness, operating on perpetual autopilot and clinging onto any semblance of routine and normalcy. Living, as a contrast, is the state of total engagement with life, feeling the broad spectrum of emotions, and being open to creative potential. The experience of existing can lead to a life devoid of creative expression, or what we might call writer’s block, creative slowdown, or lack of inspiration.
If you feel that you are suffering a creative block, the good news is that creative potential exists within you. Engaging with it is the key to unlocking hope and purpose—the two elements needed to awaken us from existing and elevate us into living. Here are a few ways to tap into your why and, by doing so, boost your creativity:
“Splitting the ambivalence” describes the phenomenon that occurs when two people become so polarized in their stances that they are unable to step out of their positions. This occurs in relationships of all forms, but for this conversation I’m going to focus on romantic relationships. As Esther Perel describes it, “people come in with a story that is either/or” and the story becomes ‘I want one thing and my partner wants the opposite’. When one person adamantly says they want one thing, and the other passionately says no, it feels like one partner has 0% doubt and the other is 100% doubtful. Rather than meeting in the middle, one partner takes on one half of the perspective, which polarizes and puts the other half on their partner. I know this can all be a bit confusing in generalities, so here’s an example of how it can play out in couples therapy.
“While there can be no question that the last two years have harmed us, it’s also encouraged us to rethink how, where, and why we work.” - Rha Goddess
As Rha Goddess so aptly points out, the last two years have led many of us to question the hows, wheres, and whys of our work. I have seen clients leave their jobs to start new jobs, leave their jobs even when they don’t have new jobs, and leave their jobs because they have a bigger “why” that’s calling to them. A lot of times this bigger “why” is connected to a deep sense of purpose and calling, a desire to remove themselves from the traditional 9-5, and create a relationship with work that honors their values and energy cycles.
As a business owner I find it so exciting to work with clients who are exploring the idea of starting their own business. I have learned a lot over the years from my own experience as a business owner. I have put in time, energy, and resources towards learning how to run a business (and still have so much to learn). I have educated myself with books, professional coaches, masterminds, and courses to learn about business, money psychology, and leadership. Through my own experiences and a good lot of trial and error, I’m sharing with you my 10 fundamental tips for starting your own business, whether it’s a side hustle or your true calling.
Take a moment to consider something you spend money on, and what it brings into your life. Does that thing or experience fill you with joy? Does it make your life easier? Does it make you feel safer? Is it important to someone you love and you like to see them happy?
Now consider that the quality of our primary relationships with our loved ones is one of the key determinants of life satisfaction and happiness. Learning ways to communicate, set healthy boundaries, and identify and express vulnerable feelings is vital to the health of our long-term relationships. Your family of origin may not have modeled safety or the productive sharing of feelings. You may have learned that self-preservation meant taking care of others, but never learned to care for yourself. Or you may have learned that taking care of others is the only way to feel worthy of love.
January is the Monday of the year. The holidays are over, it feels like there’s nothing to look forward to, you’ve returned from your travels (or moved from the couch to your desk), your kids are back at school, and you’ve started back up at work. The weather is bleak and there is less daylight (though I can hear everyone outside of Los Angeles rolling their eyes at me); life returns to normal, yet for many of us we don’t feel normal at all. We expect to start the new year feeling well rested, calmer and more grounded, and ready to make all of the changes in our lives that will make us a new and improved person. This all sounds wonderful, albeit unrealistic. If you’re struggling with adjusting to 2022, here are some ways to combat the post-holiday blues
