Shame is an essential social emotion that helps you set clear behavioral boundaries for yourself. Your shame keeps a constant watchful eye on you, and it (usually) arises when you’re about to do something you really shouldn’t do, or when you’ve broken one of the moral or ethical agreements you’ve made. If so, you can ask yourself the following questions for shame: Whose ethics and values … Read More
You can befriend all of your emotions. In my post on befriending your anger, I re-framed anger as a necessary emotion that supports you in developing and maintaining your healthy self image. Now, let’s look at the emotion that I call anger’s friend or partner: shame. I envision anger as the sentry that calmly walks the perimeter of your self-image and watches out for any challenges … Read More
Anger is an essential emotion Anger has a terrible reputation, because so many people use anger to hurt themselves or others. But this isn’t anger’s fault! This is not anger’s true nature. Anger is an essential emotion that helps you in every area of your life, and when you know what anger is and how to work with it, you can change your life. Your anger … Read More
Developing Empathic Boundaries Setting Flexible Boundaries in an Often-Rigid World A live 2-hour Zoom workshop with Karla McLaren, M.Ed. Many of us have been taught that boundaries should be rigid and wall-like, and this rigidity tends to reduce empathy (which is sometimes a good idea). But healthy boundaries can also be living, flexible agreements that can shift and change with changing circumstances. Rigid boundaries can … 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
We’ve been told that anger needs to be controlled or suppressed, and that it’s a negative emotion, but anger can be the most honorable emotion you have if you know what it is, why it appears, and how to work with it. All of your emotions bring you specific gifts and skills, and we’ll look at all of your emotions — one by one — in … 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
Hello emotional kids and parents! (That’s all of us, you know.) Emotions are at the center of all learning, thinking, and behavior, and you can learn how to work with them directly and skillfully. Kids especially love learning about their emotions, and we’ve made a 2-page chart for kids that includes emotional vocabulary words and helps kids understand exactly what their emotions do and what gifts … Read More
Hello, Emotional People! That’s all of us, you know. Emotions are central to everything we think, every idea we have, and everything we do, but most of us haven’t learned how to work skillfully with all of our emotions. Luckily, we can learn to work well with our emotions at any stage of our lives. One of our licensed Dynamic Emotional Integration® professionals, Jennifer Asdorian, created … 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