Empathy is not a soft skill — it’s a vital skill The quality of your empathy — for yourself and others — can mean the difference between just getting through life and thriving in difficult times. Tending your world without losing yourself You may not realize that your empathy and your emotions are always working on behalf of you and your relationships. Many people treat empathy as … Read More
My newest book is here! I am so pleased to present my newest book, Embracing Anxiety: How to Access the Genius of This Vital Emotion! When I wrote my book, The Language of Emotions, way back in 2009, I didn’t understand anxiety well at all. I mistakenly saw it as a problem, but I’m not alone in making that mistake! As I did my … Read More
Your emotions aren’t the problem As I prepare for the release of my newest book, Embracing Anxiety: How to Access the Genius of This Vital Emotion I’m reminded of two emotional mistakes that almost everyone makes: We blame emotions for causing problems, when in fact, emotions arise to help us deal with problems We blame emotions for people’s lack of emotional skills I call these the … Read More
How do we build a more loving and inclusive world? In 2016, when the serious troubles in the United States began to boil and coalesce into ever deepening and blatant racism, I went into a period of study with my friend and colleague Amanda Ball. We read everything that we could get our hands on about race, prejudice, and discrimination, and we educated ourselves from the … Read More
SADNESS: The Water Bearer ACTION REQUIRED: Sadness arises when it’s time to let go of something that isn’t working anyway. If you can truly let go, relaxation and rejuvenation will follow. GIFTS: Release ~ Fluidity ~ Grounding ~ Relaxation ~ Rejuvenation THE INTERNAL QUESTIONS: What must be released? What must be rejuvenated? Sadness is a wonderful emotion that arises when something needs to be released. This … Read More
How Do We Celebrate Our Mothers? A real-world poem for Mother’s Day How do we celebrate our mothers — The ones who are here and the ones who aren’t? The ones who gave their lives for us, And the ones who walked away. The ones who lovingly directed our lives as if we were art projects, And the ones who never knew how to welcome us into … Read More
Hello emotional kids and parents! (That’s all of us, you know.) We’re all experiencing lots of emotional responses and reactions to the pandemic, and I posted a free emotions chart for adults, based on a chart that one of our licensed Dynamic Emotional Integration® professionals, Jennifer Asdorian, created. The chart for adults is here. We’ve also made a 2-page chart for kids that includes emotional vocabulary words, and … Read More
Yes, you can learn to work with multiple emotions! In fact, you already do work with multiple emotions, because it’s completely natural for emotions to arise in pairs, groups, and clusters. Emotions are vital aspects of your capacity to think, decide, behave, and act, and each one brings you specific gifts and skills — and it’s normal and natural to require more than one gift or … Read More
Hello, Emotional People! That’s all of us, you know. We’re all experiencing lots of emotional responses and reactions to the pandemic, and one of our licensed Dynamic Emotional Integration® professionals, Jennifer Asdorian, created a chart to help track her emotions and see what gifts and skills they were bringing to her. We also created a two-page chart for kids, here. I asked for Jennifer’s permission, and made … Read More
Discovering the gifts of depression Situational depression arises when some aspect of your life is unworkable or dysfunctional; this emotion stops you for a vital reason, and there are many ways to support yourself when depression is present. When we looked at the gifts of sadness, I wrote about what I call the fundamental correlation error that I see with many emotions — which is that … Read More