The Most Undermet Emotional Needs

image for blog entry

For years I often heard people say that you have to go through grief and pain, you can’t go around it, you can’t go above it, you have to go through it. For years I didn’t understand what that meant. We live in an incredibly emotionally avoidant culture which then leads to chronic mental emotional health struggles, high addiction and disconnection from self and others among other symptoms. 

In order to move through grief or pain a person must create a safe space for emotions to build. Like a wave on a beach, emotions need to be able to build and crash safely on the shore before they can recede out and become calm again. Instead of allowing the natural flow, we often dam up the water as high as we can to keep it from crashing, but then when it inevitably breaks the dam, and the lifetime of suppressed emotions can come cascading and flooding ...

Read more

Posted in:

  • Change
  • Communication
  • Control
  • Coping
  • Decisions
  • Effort
  • Emotions
  • Empathy
  • Goals
  • Grief
  • Mindset
  • Positivity
  • Presence
  • Processing
  • Tragedy
  • compassion

Tags:

  • Communication
  • Emotions
  • acceptance
  • anxiety
  • change
  • compassion
  • coping
  • courage
  • emotional intelligence
  • feelings
  • grief
  • growth
  • self-compassion

Revisiting the Map

image for blog entry

A sense of direction, purpose, and identity. Most would agree that these are factors contributing to a fulfilling life. At some point most of us have also experienced the anxiety or depression that accompanies a loss of these.

As we attend to the daily concerns of life, we experience the satisfaction and positive emotions that come with caring for family, making progress toward work, financial and health goals etc. At the same time, the immediacy of these concerns can sometimes take almost all of our focus, distracting us from parts of ourselves that may have been buried under the daily routine.

To bring balance, it’s important that we check in with ourselves from time to time to ensure that we are moving forward with internal integration, an awareness of who we are and where we want to go. 

A simple exercise for doing this involves making two lists. 

For list one, make a list of the to ...

Read more

Posted in:

  • Decisions
  • Goals
  • Imagination
  • Mindset
  • Positivity
  • Productivity
  • Self-Care

Tags:

  • Dreams
  • Expectations
  • Hopes
  • balance
  • change
  • focus
  • intentional
  • reflection
  • reframe
  • self-care
  • success

Nature and Therapy

image for blog entry

Recent decades have seen an increasing interest in the healing and therapeutic potential of nature and the perspective of various nature-based interventions for the benefit of mental health. The field of nature-based therapies is expanding in line with this interest. During the formative years of modern psychotherapy, several psychotherapists had a close, loving relationship with nature and who had contributed in some ways to the formation of nature therapy. One of them was Carl Jung, a renowned Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who was one of the first people in the field of mental health to voice concerns about the separation of men and nature. C. Jung believed that a modern man was in danger of losing all contact with the world of instinct, increased by his living an urban existence and separation from nature. Jung wrote in his diaries that the loss of instinct is largely responsible for the pathological condition of contem ...

Read more

Posted in:

  • Breathe
  • Coping
  • Counseling Process
  • Effort
  • Mindfullness
  • Mindset
  • Positivity
  • Practice
  • Presence
  • Rest

Tags:

  • Connection
  • Spiritual
  • balance
  • breathing
  • challenge
  • coping
  • growth
  • intentional
  • mindfullness
  • movement
  • practice
  • rest
  • serenity

Loading...

Loading...

Loading...

Loading...

Loading...