The holidays can be a stressful time, between navigating family dynamics and taking care of yourself. Perhaps you’re spending the holidays alone or dealing with painful emotions. Whatever your holiday challenges may be, download my free eBook of tips for getting through the final stretch of 2021 as peacefully as possible.
Read More...When Grief Keeps You Paralyzed: 6 Gentle Steps to Move Forward
Grief is a universal human emotion. At some point, we all experience it – whether we lose someone dear to us, suffer a trauma or tragedy, or simply live long enough to feel the ache of loss that accrues naturally over a lifetime. And although grief affects us all, it’s rarely easy to deal with. Our ancestors marked death with lavish feasts, loud and sustained lamenting and the wearing of mourning clothing for at least two full years – yet grieving today has mostly become a solo endeavor, and one we’d better hurry up and get through.
Read More...Learn from Your Mistakes and Move on with Self-Compassion
Have you made a mistake today? If so, welcome to being human. Mistakes are an inevitable part of life. But what is the secret to learning from them and moving on quickly? In our rather punitive culture, we often head straight for self-recrimination. We berate ourselves, magnify the meaning of the mistake, or get stuck in replaying it in our minds. Researchers at Duke and Wake Forest Universities suggest, however, that the opposite approach – self-compassion – may be much more effective.
Read More...Learn to Respond, Not React
Learning to respond, not react, starts with noticing your body’s tension when you’re in a stressful situation. This is your cue to calm down before reacting or engaging in a manner likely to make things worse. In this post, I’ll step you through an exercise for reprocessing past situations so that you can then approach future stress with the calm and clarity essential for a constructive response.
Read More...The Wisdom in Letting Go
When the stories we tell ourselves about the pain and trauma from our past color our present-day experiences, practicing detachment can help us let go. Professor Stanley Rachman’s experience with patients suffering from PTSD and OCD disorders shows how developing a more neutral response to traumatic experiences from the past helps lessen the impact they have on us.
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