Working with human nature, not against it.
Everyone is talking about Mindfulness. To the point where you might not want to care about it. You probably see annoying memes about the present moment. I get it. Sometimes I scroll by and just want to hate it. But, the reason mindfulness is huge is because it actually is a huge deal. Literally,...
Early on, human beings develop programs for dealing with things in life. You don’t realize what programs are running until they are exposed, which usually means they are causing problems. When you develop these programs, there is not a lot of conscious discernment going on. You don’t say, “hey, that seems like a good...
Did you know that the unpleasant feelings you experience are essentially a cleansing system? Yes. They are arrows pointing to what needs to be changed, updated or upgraded. The hard part about the unpleasant feelings is that you might find yourself avoiding them or tempted to avoid them. And, it’s not just you. It’s me...
When I ask: “How do you feel about that?” Most often, I get a response that starts with: “Well, I think…” Why is it hard to figure out the difference between what you feel and what you think? Why does it matter? It matters because thoughts, feelings and behaviors are the three channels your Human...
Did you know that the Human Emotional System has three channels it can use to communicate with you? So, the Human Emotional System is your messaging system. Your internal GPS, if you will. It is talking with you all the time. It is letting you know which way to go, what you want, what...
Did you know that a sensation in your body is the first available cue that an emotion is present? Did you know that this is a surprise to most people? As Candace Pert’s research reveals, there are neuropeptides released in the body during different subjective emotional states, causing a sensation in the body. In...
Last week, I talked about the intensity of emotion to establish a framework of when feelings can be helpful and unhelpful. This week I want to talk more about the unhelpful part of intense emotions: flooding. It’s true that being with your feelings and developing the skills to tolerate them is essential. Absolutely. And,...
In spin class, there is a teacher that always says in the beginning: “I coach on levels of intensity: easy, moderate, hard, breathless”. The intensity for unpleasant feelings is similar: easy, moderate, hard, breathless. While there is the range of all human emotion that we need to practice tolerating, there is also the intensity...
If emotional health means allowing and tolerating the entire range of human emotion, why do you resist the unpleasant feelings so much? We could have a whole conversation here about ways societal messages contribute to shutting down unpleasant emotions. But I’m just not going to get into it. Maybe later. Understanding Resistance Let’s just...
I ask my child clients this question all the time: Which feelings are OK? And, pretty much every time, they tell me “happy”. And maybe they will look at their parent if the parent is in the room. But, let’s be real, as adults, we kinda feel the same way. Maybe we intellectually understand...