Your Inner Critic Needs Healing, Too

Hello Beautiful Souls.

Ah, those inner voices that bully us into submission… like the inner critic that says, “You’re stupid for being worried! There’s nothing to worry about!” Those voices are really challenging to deal with and I feel like sometimes we don’t realize that they are actually part of the package that needs healing…
Yes, the parts of us that are worried unnecessarily need healing, but so does the critic! And that can be tricky to realize when the critic sounds so reasonable

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Evolving: Feeling Safe When Your Future Feels Unknown

Hello Beautiful Souls,

Have you ever experienced an internal transformation so big, so dramatic that you didn’t know what you were changing into? You’re doing your self-development work and suddenly the future just looked blank? You had no idea what was going to happen?

That’s really scary because of course.
We want to know what’s on the other side of change.
We want to know if there are lions and tigers over there!

We want to know what we’re going to need in order to feel safe and comfortable on the other side!

If we can’t see what’s going to happen, if the future looks blank, it’s really hard to quiet down those frightened voices in our head.

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Healing: When are you releasing an emotion vs making it worse?

Hello Beautiful Souls.

How do we know if we’re healing something or we’re just sitting around, ruminating, complaining and making it worse?
How do we know if we’re releasing the charge or adding to it and making it worse?
Clearing it or holding it firmly in place? Maybe even making it bigger?!

The difference between working with something in a way that improves it versus a way that just keeps it here is the difference between healing and wallowing… How do we know when we’re doing one versus the other? Even in meditation, we might be releasing or we might be wallowing. How do we know?

I’ve realized a new way to think about this, a new model that I’ve stared using. I want to share that with you because I find it really helpful. First, I’m going to give you the one I’ve refined over the years from personal and professional work, and then I’ll give you the newer one. They both focus on healing emotions, because they end up being such a big part of the healing process.

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Healing: Have I Healed It If It Keeps Coming Back?!

Hello Beautiful Souls,

If you’ve done a lot of work around something, like anger, have you healed it if you keep feeling angry?
Isn’t it supposed to go away if you’ve healed it?
Isn’t that the POINT of healing something? So that you don’t have to deal with it anymore?
Didn’t you heal it to make it go away?

For me, when it comes back, I think, “Oh my god, I thought I healed my anger, but I’m mad at my husband again! Where did this come from?! I still haven’t healed this!? Will it ever end?!”
Right?!

How many times have you had that happen: you heal something and it comes back?!
And then you doubt that you’ll ever heal it.

What if there is a better way to look at this?
Let’s look at what happens in healing, and then a way to look at it that allows us to heal in degrees, over time, vs getting disappointed that our magic wand is clearly broken!

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Healing: Ways To Measure Progress

Hello, Beautiful Souls.

You’re on your path, on a healing journey… and you’re getting better!
Or at least you think you’re getting better…
But how can you be sure?
How do you know if you’re actually improving, or just kidding yourself?

This is a great question.

If you’re on a big journey, tackling big hairy things, it’s good to know if you’re making progress…. if you’re just spinning your wheels, or if you’re getting traction. And it’s especially comforting to know if you’ve just turned a BIG corner.

I have 3 suggestions for tracking your progress that I find really useful. Most of us will prefer one or another, so feel into what fits you on your current path.

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Getting Comfortable With My Emotions Helps Me with Everyone Else’s

Hello Beautiful Souls,

How often have you not said anything when you’re upset? Holding it in, doing your best to keep the peace? And then those times when you do say something, the other person gets upset in response!

Ouch!
Now you’re uncomfortable and they’re uncomfortable, too. Argh!

This means that not only do we need to get better at expressing our own emotions, but we also have to get better at handling those of others. As if the first was not hard enough!

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Getting Comfortable with Our Emotions by Moving Our Bodies

Hello Beautiful Souls,

There are several steps to becoming comfortable with our uncomfortable emotions – and many ways to go about it!

First, we need to feel safe enough to even start. If we’re feeling really threatened, it’s hard to want to do anything other than defend or protect. So it you’re interested in this topic, congratulations, you’re already in a good place – you feel safe enough to even consider this! Bravo!

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