Search Results for Anger

Understanding hatred Previously, we looked at our tendency to express our hatred instead of working with it more deeply. Often, we can become obsessive about our hate targets and project all sorts of troubling material onto them. The fascinating thing about hatred is that you choose your hate targets not simply because they’re odious, but because they’re specifically odious in ways that cause specific, shadow-driven hatequakes … Read More

Hatred: The Shadowy and Necessary Emotion As we take a tour through the emotional realm, we’ve started with the Anger Family emotions that help you set boundaries: Anger, shame/guilt, and apathy (the protective mask for anger). Now, we’ll look at an emotion that can set boundaries in very troubling ways if you don’t know how to work with it: hatred. Actually, we’ll continue to look at hatred … Read More

Your apathy steps forward to protect you for many reasons. You may be in an unworkable relationship, job, or situation where you can’t set clear boundaries. You may not have a practice for your anger yet. You may be avoiding your fatigue. Your apathy may be protecting you from moving into a necessary depression if you don’t have time to slow down (or if you don’t … Read More

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 can’t be dealt … 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

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

Back in 2019, when Joe Biden, a powerful, wealthy, White man who was preparing to preside over a country built on the backs of enslaved people, said “There’s not a racist bone in my body,” I thought so much about the strangely dislocated and disembodied nature of racism here in the United States. Of course, he’s not the only person to use this phrase; we hear … Read More

There is always a way out of cultic relationships As a cult survivor and cult researcher, I have been speaking out about the cultic control of our country, and I know this: there is always a way out. I wrote about Donald Trump’s cultic leadership style here, and shared nine facets that cult leaders share. He used all nine of them: Understanding Unhealthy Leadership. What this … Read More

Welcoming the genius in the Fear Family In times of danger and upheaval, many emotions will step forward to offer their gifts and their unique forms of genius. But most of us don’t know this, so we treat our emotions as problems instead of gifts. But your emotions are not problems! They arise to help you deal with problems! I’m seeing people everywhere telling us not … 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