Tag: self-care

Becoming a 'Human Being' vs. a 'Human Doing'

When I was in college, I had a thoughtful professor who hated the 'b' word; as in 'busy.' He would say that too often people use the word 'busy' to describe how they have been and he didn’t understand why people felt the need to let others know that they had a ton going on. He also noted that the phrase 'being busy,' doesn’t actually describe how a person is feeling. I found this profound to think about. Why is it that some people feel the need to always be so busy and to let others know that they’re busy?

The way we choose to live our lives will shape who we become. Often that requires deep reflection of our habits and the kinds of relationships we are choosing to allow in our life. However, one of the greatest barriers to this deeper reflection is 'busyness.'

A lot of people recognized their addiction to busyness d ...

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Body First

“Sorry” I said as I muted myself and leaned out of the camera’s view during my virtual therapy session. A ferocious sneeze escaped and I blew my nose with the force that comes with being a week sick. I unmuted myself to re-join the session and my therapist looked at me and says “No need to apologize, Kati. Body first.” 

“Huh?” I replied, not entirely sure what she meant. She proceeded to explain that I have no need to apologize for my body simply being a body. “Sneezing, snot, using the bathroom…. These are merely bodily functions of all people with bodies and don’t require an apology” she explained.  I laughed and agreed that it was odd that I’d automatically apologize for blowing my nose… I was, after all, recovering from Covid and congestion was unavoidable. And yet my apology had slipped out faster than I could stop it. It had actually felt like I was being considera ...

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           Whether we realize it or not we use coping strategies everyday.  Some maybe as subtle as sleeping in to avoid the traffic, or procrastinating on a project or term paper due (guilty) hoping it will just do it itself.  It is when our unhealthy habits become a problem with our normal daily routine is when we need a change.  Our skills, routine or what we think is working needs to be looked at.  Is this beneficial for me is this getting me where I want to be, am I seeing bad consequences from these decisions?  These are just some of the questions we need to ask ourselves if we aren’t where we want to be. 

            Coping skills, strategies, or techniques have a couple of common threads that can be applied to just about any disorder; anxiety, anger, alcohol abuse or any other issue you may be going through.  Th ...

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