Learn to Access the Healing Genius in Your Emotions Starts Monday, December 13th at Empathy Academy 8 week online course – $165 This is the perfect time to learn how to work with all of your emotions in a relaxed, self-paced course. Your emotions — all of them — are vital to your intelligence, your social skills, and your ability to understand yourself and the world … Read More
Entering the Sacred River of Grief A Community Healing Ritual Saturday, December 4th to Sunday, December 19th, 2021 Online at Empathy Academy I have often said that we live in a grief-impaired time. Many of us have a very difficult time working with grief, and our funeral rituals are often stripped of their power to bring communities together to heal. But we haven’t forgotten our grief … Read More
Learning to access the genius in your emotions Live Zoom workshop, Saturday, November 27th from 10am-noon Pacific Your emotions contain the specific wisdom you need in each situation, but if you don’t know how to identify or work with them, their presence may just confuse you! In this Exploring Your Emotions as Allies workshop, instructor and Dynamic Emotional Integration® professional Heather Giasson will walk you … Read More
Your emotions aren’t the problem As I was writing my 2020 book, Embracing Anxiety: How to Access the Genius of This Vital Emotion I thought a lot about 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 emotional … Read More
Your judgments have value and purpose When I grew up in spiritual groups, I was taught that judgment was forbidden, and wow, was that a colossal mistake. This no-judgment rule is still infecting a lot of communities, however, so it’s worth looking at again. This essay is from my 2010 book The Language of Emotions. When I refer to judgment, I refer to your capacity to … Read More
We’re all empaths In my earlier career, I identified as an empath, but I stopped doing so because the term got to be really troubling. An empath tends to be seen as some kind of magical psychic, and that’s nonsense. Empathy is a human trait and skill, but it’s also a trait in many animal species, so there’s nothing magical about it. We’re all empaths, because … Read More
Welcoming the gifts of the Sadness Family In times of upheaval, loss, and trouble, many emotions will step forward to offer their gifts and their unique forms of genius. If you don’t know this, you may mistakenly respond to multiple emotions as if they’re problems in and of themselves. You don’t have to; there is another way. All emotions bring you help and support, and all … Read More
Anger is essential to true forgiveness I wrote this piece in my book The Language of Emotions back in 2010, but I return to it a lot. So much of what we’re told about forgiveness teaches us to avoid the powerful emotions that arise when we’ve been wounded or betrayed. But these powerful emotions are crucial to our ability to realize what happened, feel it, and … 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 … Read More
Celebrate the Full Spectrum! April 2nd is International Autism Awareness Day, but I have to say, if you’re not aware of autism yet, where have you been? The cool kids have already moved on from mere awareness to inclusion, acceptance, and love. We’re celebrating Autism Acceptance Day, Autism Acceptance Month, Autism Acceptance Year, Autism Acceptance Decade (and Autism Acceptance Eon, while we’re at it). Many of my friends … Read More