Anxiety, 9

Tolerance Manage anxiety by increasing your tolerance for what is uncomfortable. When you cannot tolerate disappointing other people, you participate in a lot you are not interested in and blow past your boundaries. Thus stress and anxiety. Manage anxiety by increasing your capacity to tolerate what is uncomfortable without adjusting your boundaries. Build the muscle of: Tolerating the disappointment of others Tolerating the feeling of false guilt Tolerating other people's anxiety Journal Prompt: What do I need to tolerate to better manage my anxiety?

Feeling Your Way Through Grief, 5

Fragile. Grief is feeling fragile in places you hope to keep sealed and intact.  Like trying to hold on to eggs while riding a roller coaster. Journal Prompt: I feel fragile…

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Feeling Your Way Through Grief, 4

Guilt. Grief is a magnet for guilt. You feel guilt that you did too little. Guilt that you did too much. Guilt that you survived. Guilt about your feelings, missed opportunities, and mistakes. When these feelings morph to a cemented state of being it chains you to the past and prevents forward movement. Journal Prompt: I feel guilt about…

Feeling Your Way Through Grief, 3

Threatened. Grief pummels emotional stability. Like yoga on a paddle board, the emotional self wobbles through normalcy in the midst of grief. Already uneasy, emotional collapse threatens in harsh comments, the mundane, in mistakes and disappointments, and unnecessary commercials. It's no wonder you keep a distance from your emotions. Why wouldn't you? Journal Prompt: I feel threatened by...

Feeling Your Way Through Grief, 2

Senses. Grief is experienced through your senses–your hearing, sight, smell, taste, and touch. A familiar song. Unexpected fluorescent lights. The smell of Autumn. Bites of cheesecake. The texture of a blanket. What you smell, see, taste, hear, and touch show up in your memory of what has been lost. Use your senses to feel your way through grief. Journal Prompts: My grief sounds like... My grief looks like... My grief smells like... My grief tastes like... My grief feels like...

Feeling Your Way Through Grief, 1

Without. Bobbing in feelings of disconnection and isolation, grieving is learning to live without. It's learning to live without people you intended to live with. It's watching from the outside the experiences you hoped for. It's missing milestones you expected to meet. Journal Prompt: I am learning to live without...

Rethinking

Too close to see her own hypocrisy, she didn’t realize she was teaching the very action she was condemning.

Fair Fights, 9

Rumination. Conflicts decrease in fairness when you ruminate obsessively. Having a personal perspective, valid. Reflection for personal growth, helpful. Obsessive rumination, hazardous. Obsessive rumination puts you at risk of responding and reacting out of context. This rumination can fuel self-triggering narratives–sunk deep in your history. It may sound like: "You never think of my needs, just like my mom never considered my needs. No one ever considers my needs." Increasing fair conflict comes with rethinking how much mental real estate you are willing to give rumination. Journal Prompt: Rumination tends to lead to...

Fair Fights, 8

Worn. Conflict is unfair when you fight through already worn sock holes. When you begin repeating yourself, as if you were a pre-recorded mixtape, it is fair for zero people. Recycled conflict is a signal to pause. You need a break. You need to try again later. Journal Prompt: My conflict mixtape sounds like...