Category Archives: Wisdom

Feb13

Thoughtful Thursday #291 – Valentine’s Day

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Feeling blue this Valentines Day because you are single, that is perfectly normal.

But Valentine’s day is more than romantic love, it’s about self love and love of your friends, children, significant others, those who make your life better, or whatever you are passionate about.

Do you, buy yourself a gift, go out with a couple, go on a vacation that you want, explore new destinations, talk to strangers, go to a social function alone, relish who you are.

Romantic love shows up quicker the more you know yourself. No one can resist a person who is confident and strong in standing on their own.

So this Valentines Day, let it be a reminder that self love is really the first love you ever need.

Happy Do You Day………………..

Jan31

Thoughtful Thursday #245 – Internalizing Emotional Pain

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Internalized emotional pain is personal slavery and a prim and proper intimate prison in your mind. It’s where we have been triggered and swallowed emotional pain for any number of reasons. Maybe we have been betrayed by someone you trusted, or out of the blue you were the target of cruelty, perhaps you have been the object of someone’s dysfunctional projections, and the result is you feel a life situation has crushed you.

We can recognize how we have internalized emotional pain. We have excessive worry, over indulge in social media, phantom physical sensations, venting at others expense, wanting to retaliate, self-destructive behaviors, your self-esteem is nowhere in sight, there’s a presence of anxiety, sadness, and social isolation, we blow up over nothing.

This is a painful way to live, very painful, I understand how it feels, and no one is immune internalizing emotional pain.

If you are struggling with sorting out emotional pain, hang in there, initially the pain may be  too much, that’s OK, take some time to process what has happened.

Practice self-care: acknowledge what happened, save yourself from further pain, summon up compassion for yourself, internalizing emotional pain does not make you tough, confrontation may be appropriate but do it with a calm voice, find someone who will listen to you unconditionally, write it out on a piece of paper, write every last emotion and detail, find whatever you need to bring a sense of groundedness and peace back to your mind,  look within yourself for an answer that works for you.

In time the pain will pass, that’s the beauty of time and self-care and perhaps you will learn that you are really very strong and can be grow internally and handle the next situation with self-protection and authority as the mighty, capable person that your are.

 

Jan3

Thoughtful Thursday #241 – Am I Unloveable

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Sometimes our behavior makes us seem unloveable. We get unflattering feedback of our strange behavior and cringe with embarrassment. We get rejected because we seem aloof and unapproachable. Maybe we are single and think we just have not found the right person. Or perhaps we think we need a trip to Tibet to find ourselves. Are we that strange?

A Full Stop is Necessary.

Part of maturity and growing as a person is asking questions.

How am I making my life difficult. We may draw a blank here but keep asking.

How do I react when I am  annoyed, angry, happy.

How do I react when I am tired. Am I difficult around money, what do I worry about. What are my beliefs around sex.

There are tons of questions to ask and none of them are meant to make you feel guilty. The answers to these questions are to make you aware of your own patterns and how others in your life may perceive them, be it annoying or not.

Growing up to be a whole human is not easy but step by step you will become how you are meant to be.

 

Sep20

Thoughtful Thursday #228 – The Perfect Sin

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Complicit silence means to remain silent and complicit of a questionable act.

Complicit means involved in some wrongdoing.

Willful ignorance means refusing to be informed in bad faith otherwise known as ignoring the facts.

This amounts to a perfect sin, the sinner is perfectly lazy in not making effort to check facts, rethink their beliefs and opinions, being afraid of being wrong and knowing on some level they are actually wrong or actually getting involved in knowing truth in any significant way and staying close minded and blindly following along as if nothing is wrong.

These sinners are witness to domestic violence, child abuse, animal cruelty, bullying, turning away instead of helping, cheering wrongdoing because they are too passive to be a fighter and a sundry of crimes against our fellow-man.

Complicit silence and willful ignorance are mutual pals, can’t have one without the other. Both are incredibly harmful.

If you feel you can’t get involved and are a  witness to an injustice then say a prayer to your favorite deity for a positive outcome.

Send good wishes and pure feeling to the offended party.

And…………. you can call the appropriate authorities anonymously, talk to a mental health professional for advice, take an active part in getting involved to help save someone’s life by getting informed. If the offended is a child talk to their teacher. It’s OK to be courageous even if you are scared.

None of this is easy, but to remain in complicit silence and willful ignorance is so very harmful to all involved.

If you are a recipient of complicit silence and willful ignorance don’t remain quiet, fight back, find a way to get out of there, don’t give up. You are worth the effort. And you deserve the best life.

 

Jun21

Thoughtful Thursday #217 – Bullying

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No one wants to be bullied and as we know the objective is to oppress, torment, intimidate and browbeat someone into submission.

Bullying is easily recognized if we are observing it in real-time. But do we recognize bullying when we do it to ourselves? Probably not, here are some signals you are bullying yourself.

  1. your inner critic has a field day beating you up by noticing everything that you do wrong.
  2. your inner critic says unkind, mean things to you.
  3. some believe that the inner critic is a motivator to do better, this is completely false.
  4. anxiety, image issues, social anxiety can be the inner critic hounding you with negativity.
  5. watching TV shows that are violent and traumatize you with fear. (I binge watch crime shows.)

You can’t completely get rid of the inner critic however you can arrest its relentlessness and power with a these few tips.

  1. pay attention to your thoughts.
  2. don’t beat yourself up about these thoughts.
  3. notice what your triggers are.
  4. respond to yourself with kindness.
  5. speak to yourself with compassion.
  6. turn off your TV for a while and limit the shows that are violent. (I’m watching more happy programs.)
  7. redirect your thoughts and actions to something happy.

Being mindful, kind and compassionate to yourself is an important skill to learn and takes some time.

Instead, you want caring, reassuring, encouraging and supportive words and actions towards yourself.

You are so worth the time and effort.

Jun17

Hope VS Hopelessness

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Hope-a feeling of trust, a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen and thinking it could happen.  A feeling that something good will happen or be true.

Hopelessness-a feeling of despair, without hope, downhearted, having no expectation of good or success, incapable of redemption or improvement. Feeling dreadful, horrible, terrible and useless.

When we are triggered we can swing between both of these feelings; here are a few suggestions on how to remain hopeful in the face of hopelessness.

  1. Take a walk in nature.
  2. If you are into prayer or mediation, indulge in it.
  3. Listen to music.
  4. Reach out and talk to someone.
  5. Write your guts out.
  6. Exercise
  7. Get enough sleep.
  8. Drink water.
  9. Don’t isolate.
  10. Be kind to yourself and others.
  11. Know that you will come out on the other side.

The feeling of hope is light; the feeling of hopelessness is heavy.

Hope is uplifting; hopelessness is oppressive.

You will know the difference immediately if you pay attention.

 

Jun16

Understand This

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Here’s a quote from Yolo Akili’s book:  Dear Universe; Letters of Affirmation and Empowerment – For All Of Us –

Principles of Human Communication:

#5 Understand that everyone interprets the world through their own ideas, past experience, psychological framework, social location and pain. You see the world based on where you have been. You see the world based on who you are, based on how you are perceived and how you perceive others. Those perceptions are not absolute. They are not the only truth, and they are not the only way of knowing things. Understand this.

The author is pointing out that in order to have effective communication with other humans we must put aside our own beliefs.  By putting aside our own beliefs we will better understand where the other human is coming from. As a result you will have a clearer, more truthful communication.

Jun10

Solitude Is Great Until It Turns To Isolation.

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I cherish alone time, lots of it, but I can take it to the extreme until it becomes isolation.

We are social creatures by nature and without being social we can lose self-esteem, and self-confidence.

Isolation has a way of creeping up on us and separating us from friends, real world interactions, causes anxiety, you feel like you are in captivity in a cage, and detached from any healthy interactions.

Social media does not help, it lends itself into isolating us even more, plus it encourages the feelings of exclusion and an unrealistic idea that others lives are better than yours. Isolation also causes social anxiety. There is hope. Change is always possible.

Here are some suggestions to cure isolation:

Talk to everyone you meet.

Accept invitations even if you don’t think you want to go.

Build relationships.

Spend less time on social media.

Reach out and have an actual phone conversation instead of just social media.

Leave the house.

With a little bit of discipline and investment of your time you can get out of isolation and back into life. And if life is too much you can always go back to solitude but this time without the isolation.

 

Jun7

Thoughtful Thursday #216 – Reparenting Yourself

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You grew up in a dysfunctional family, your self esteem is shot, your squirming over an embarrassing action, you want to disappear, you feel rejected at every turn. Sounds like your hurt inner child is expressing itself.

Then you probably need to reparent yourself.

Many of us have grown up in chaos, we have no recollection of who our true self is. That is OK. Of course you don’t know who you are in your core, it is impossible to know if you grew up with chaos and confusion. This is where you can learn to be your own best parent.

Will it be easy, probably not, your tip is the child within feels your feelings, the hurt child within acts those feeling out inappropriately. Here is where reparenting comes in. If you can give space to those trapped feelings, both good and bad, your parent self can step in and stop any extreme behavior, or at least give a time out.

There is much written about reparenting, here are a few resources:

Adult Children of Alcoholics

Strengthening My Recovery (Book)

Alcoholics Anonymous

Taming Your Outer Child (Book)

How to Reparent Yourself (Youtube video)

Google “Reparenting Yourself”

https://www.healingfromcomplextraumaandptsd.com/inner-child-healing (Website)

beatingtrauma.com (website of Elisabeth Corey, trauma survivor and life coach)

http://pete-walker.com (Therapist and trauma survivor)

You are worth the effort and can bear the temporary, uncomfortable feelings of doing this important inner work. Give it a try.

 

 

 

May28

Grounding And Unsettled Thinking

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To ground oneself in an effort to gain healthy mental health is very necessary. It’s not easy because we get caught up stuck in our heads, thinking too much.

Grounding helps us to calm down our minds so we can get clarity. Grounding facilitates that emotional release we need to heal ourselves.

We can’t heal ourselves from unsettled thinking through a cerebral process. It doesn’t work that way. Our unexpressed emotions and unexpressed truths will consume us until they are looked at and this is where grounding comes in.

Here are a few examples of grounding that worked for me:

  1. focusing on the breath gradually working up to about 2 minutes.
  2. paying attention to what you are thinking and write it down.
  3. coming back to the present moment, what are you doing at that moment.
  4. meditation, quiet time, reflection.
  5. do artwork, draw, paint, doodle, sew, knit, woodwork any kind of crafts.
  6. write, even if it is a word, or sentence, write what you hear, write from the heart.
  7. listen to music, any music that you like.
  8. take a walk, breath in deep, look at nature, go to the ocean.
  9. take a different action, redirect your actions.
  10. exercise, any exercise is better than none.

Grounding is an important part of getting in touch with your body where a lot of negativity, hidden memories, and confusion  is stored.

Our mind needs grounding for clarity and our bodies need grounding to get rid of stored negativity, hidden memories and confusion that it holds.

By practicing grounding on a regular basis, even once a week reaps great benefit and help change your thinking by changing your emotional life for the better.