Your anxiety is necessary — and you can learn how to work with it If you’re feeling anxious, very anxious, or deeply anxious right now, I have good news for you: your anxiety is normal and necessary. You need your anxiety, and there are supportive skills and practices to help you work with your anxiety instead of being worked over by it. Most of us have … 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
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
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
Unmasking the brilliance We’ve looked at anger and shame, and now, we’ll focus on what I call the masking state of apathy (or boredom). Empathically, when I look at behaviors, I seek the emotions that underlie them. In apathy and boredom, I see a state that serves to mask fatigue and depression, certainly, but most of all, I see that apathy and boredom mask anger that … Read More
Welcoming and understanding confusion! In my empathic approach to emotions, I’ve separated emotions into seventeen categories that are based on the unique actions each emotion requires. When I created these categories, I wasn’t trying to erase emotional nuance; I did it so that you could get a handle on your emotions and develop a working emotional vocabulary. I identified two states that I call masking states: … Read More