Blog

Facing Unavoidable Pain 2

This is the second post related to my friend Larisa’s 10-day Free Self-Care Expedition, and examining my relationship with sugar. In my first post on my sugar habit, I examined my habit of emotional eating, and creating a healthier self-discipline around food. In this post I […]

Healing My Sugar Habit: Self-Discipline as Self-Love 1

I’m doing my friend Larisa’s 10-day Free Self-Care Expedition, and this post is part of my commitment to examining my relationship with sugar. These are my Day 1 Reflections. I’ve done a lot of different food diets, for a variety of reasons. Years ago in college […]

Levels of Wounding and How to Heal Them 2

Pain comes in many forms, and the key to healing is finding the right remedy for what you are experiencing. This post attempts to diagram all the kinds of psychological, emotional, and spiritual wounding I know of and the best remedies I have found for […]

Living With Death: Making Sense of Suicide 18

Emily, my partner, my love, took her own life on Wednesday, July 31st, 2013. Below my letter is Emily’s good-bye note. I’m writing this preface to help people who know her make sense of why this happened. Most of her friends and family knew Emily as […]

Limbic Templates: How to Change Deep Patterns 2

Our limbic system is our body’s emotional-relational system. Some places it shows up: when you feel awkward when you don’t like someone and you don’t know why when you fall in love when you feel “open-hearted” or “hard-hearted” when you sense someone has a creepy […]

The world can’t wait to meet you 1

Today I was given the exercise to write “Things I wish my Mom had said to me”, and then say them to myself, with feeling. Here is what I wrote: Emma, you are precious. There is nothing you can’t do. The world can’t wait to […]

Who are you living for? 0

These days I’m working on untangling a core pattern that goes like this: My life has meaning only if I’m helping people. People only want me around to the extent that I’m helping them. I really ought to be saving the world now. Is this […]

Cultivating Self-Worth 0

It’s one of the jobs of a parent to instill a child with a sense of their own worth. This happens naturally if there is enough love, support, connection, and empathy available. If this didn’t happen for you, you may have a shaky connection with […]

The Joy Manifesto 0

There are creations only you can bring into the world. There is a purpose for your life–one that nobody else can fulfill. How do you find that purpose? Joy. Follow your joy. Give birth to your brilliance. Joy is our built-in compass. It tells us […]

Lumping and Splitting – Learning from Dog Training 0

I just discovered these terms used in animal training. From the blog Eileen and Dogs: Splitting is to look for and reinforce small steps in the right direction. Lumping is skipping the small increments and hoping that the whole perfect behavior will somehow still appear. Eileen […]

Trigger Calming Magic 3

When you are triggered, your autonomic nervous system is reacting to messages from your brain that you are in danger. Our body’s survival mode kicks in, which results in primal responses: fight – lash out in anger without thinking flight – urge to leave the […]

Working With Regret 0

Regret is one of the hardest emotions we can feel. It can be a relief to realize that regret is a secondary emotion, and by addressing the primary feelings regret can be released.

Cultivating Self-Discipline is Best Done Gently 2

Self-discipline is tricky. In the movies, there is always a big motivating factor, and then a montage of activity toward a goal, and finally a triumphant success. In real life, it rarely works that way. We get the initial burst of energy. We make a […]

Accepting Our Brokenness Helps Us Heal 2

One of the major tasks of healing is self-acceptance. While a lot can be gained by developing mindfulness and skillfulness, there is a fundamental peace and clarity that comes from accepting and meeting yourself where you are without judgment. We All Judge Ourselves We all […]

Healing Hyper-vigilance and Learning Peace 17

Those who grow up in an environment that is not safe (whether physically or emotionally) develop a heightened sense of threat. They learn to scan the environment for potential danger, and react defensively. As an adult, this can continue as a chronic sense of fear […]

Book Review: SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life 0

Like her earlier book Organizing from the Inside Out, Julie Morgenstern takes an inner approach to working with clutter. Instead of  tough-love and admonitions that “less is more”, she offers a rational approach that takes into account both our emotional attachment to the past and […]

Working With Confusion and Uncertainty 0

Confusion or indecision can be unsettling and uncomfortable. Sometimes the desire to know and be certain is so overwhelming that we can work ourselves into an anxious state simply because we don’t know yet. Our Culture Has Little Room for Uncertainty Part of what makes […]

Has Your Ego Co-Opted Your Growth Work? 0

As a self-proclaimed self-help junkie, I can attest that it can get confusing. Am I becoming happier or learning more ways to name my unhappiness? Am I becoming more open-hearted and curious, or learning more clever ways to act wise and knowing? Am I working […]