Why It Can Feel Lonely When You Stop Putting Everyone Else First

“After you give so much of yourself to people over the years, one day you wake up and realize that you need someone to give to you too.” ~Sylvester McNutt

One of the biggest surprises I found on my self-care journey was how lonely I started to feel in the process, especially when I started to set boundaries with toxic people. At first, this loneliness had me questioning myself. I thought there must be something wrong with me, because I thought I was supposed to feel good and strong instead of scared and lonely when I did “the right thing.”

Honestly, most days the loneliness was so big it felt like healing wasn’t really worth it. After digging a little deeper and doing some research I discovered I wasn’t alone in this feeling, and there is a key reason why loneliness is so profound at the beginning of a self-care journey.

Due to a variety of childhood circumstances, I had developed a personal identity that revolved around making others feel seen, heard, understood, and wanted. My whole sense of self was tied into how others felt about themselves.

I was really good at showing up for people, listening to them, meeting their needs, and ensuring they felt seen, heard, and comfortable. It initially never felt like a sacrifice to me to do this, and when it did, I was proud and honored to sacrifice my own needs and wants to make others happy.

While developing this ability to “see” and love on others isn’t inherently bad, it does become a problem when this is not balanced with the ability to also allow others to “see” me. It honestly never even crossed my mind to allow someone else to do something for me. When people would offer to do me a favor or help in some way, I would always decline their support.

Accepting was way outside my comfort zone, and I would make up all kinds of excuses to be sure I didn’t need anyone else’s help or support.

Over time, these one-sided relationships always break down. We aren’t meant to only give or only receive, so when these relationships start, resentment, frustration, and jealousy always develop too. Sometimes it takes years and sometimes it takes days, but it always ends with both parties feeling taken advantage of and frustrated. 

If you are someone, like me, who tends to show up in relationships to give and not receive, then when you set boundaries and try to create healthy relationship dynamics, it will feel lonely and boring initially.

This is because we have developed an identity based on how we can make others feel. If we can make them feel happy, accepted, wanted, loved, and taken care of, then we feel happy, accepted, wanted, loved, and taken care of. We convinced ourselves (subconsciously) long ago that we didn’t actually need to feel all those feelings for ourselves, we just needed to help others feel them.

When the lie that we don’t need to be seen, loved, taken care of, or wanted, is taken away, we will feel a strong sense of loneliness and boredom initially.

Why? Because you can’t develop a new, healthier, sense of self without taking away the old first. If you don’t take it away, there’s no room for the new, healthier version of you to grow. We have to step away from the pattern of over-giving, and only give in order to make room for the receiving part of us to grow.

It is in the space between not repeating old patterns but before our new patterns have developed that we feel lonely, and often bored. Being aware of where we are in the healing cycle is critical, because most people feel that loneliness and go right back to their old patterns saying, “It didn’t work.” 

My challenge to you is to stick with it. This concept applies to all change, really.

Have you ever tried to lose weight? How do you feel in the first month? Bored, frustrated, lonely, tired, and all in your head about how much it sucked.

Most people then quit. Most people decide it isn’t worth it because they can’t stay focused on the long-term gain. Those who stick with it start to feel good. They start to see the scale drop, clothes fit better, and friends comment on how good they look. Once they start experiencing the rewards for the pattern change, they’re motivated to stick with it.

It’s the same concept here. Knowing that you are done with unhealthy relationship patterns where you are constantly taken advantage of, you’re over-giving, exhausted, and feel invisible all the time, means you are ready for a change.

Keep this why in the forefront of your mind as you navigate the first steps of change that will be tough. You are dropping the old pattern of just giving, but you don’t yet have the new pattern of receiving in place. When you develop your ability to receive from others, loneliness is gone. Not just that, but life is far better than you ever could have imagined. 

Allowing people to truly see you, know you, and love you is an incredible gift. It also means you will attract other people operating on a much higher vibration.

You will no longer attract people who only want to take from you. You will attract people with an equal balance of giving and receiving and life will feel good. Relationships will feel good, and they will stand the test of time because they will be healthy and balanced.

If you are doing the right thing and feel lonely and bored, keep going. There is so much life on the other side.

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About Janice Holland

Janice Holland is a certified trauma model therapist who empowers women to reactivate and reinvent themselves without spending years in therapy through her Courageous Woman Membership. Join at JaniceHolland.com/Membership or follow her on Instagram @the.trauma.teacher

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How I Gained Self-Confidence and Self-Love Through Nude Yoga

“Growth is uncomfortable; you have to embrace the discomfort if you want to expand.” ~Jonathan Majors

Click, the camera lens shutters as I stand barefoot in mud, waist deep in cold river water with lilies all around me, wearing nothing but a lace cloth draped across my body. I’ll never forget how nervous I was the first time I was professionally photographed nearly naked. Something greater than my fear had called me to do it.

When I was growing up, my father was determined for me to model or act. I went to several model castings and auditions and was even in a beauty pageant. But those paths led me nowhere. It was as if I was completely unnoticed.

I remember several times, after having photos taken for agencies, my father wouldn’t let me see the pictures. He would say, “They didn’t turn out good,” and I believe, to this day, that he was right and was protecting me. I was not photogenic in my youth. I was definitely a “late bloomer.”

Those experiences gave me the belief that I clearly was not the girl people were looking for. That I couldn’t model, and I wasn’t pretty enough (no blame here on my father; it was the entire experience as a whole).

In my adolescence I was far from confident; in fact, I was extremely judgmental of myself and engrossed in comparing my life to the popular girls. This made me feel and act even more awkward, and I really grew to dislike myself.

Fast-forward a decade later, when I was avidly practicing and teaching yoga. Over several years I started to learn to be in my body, to accept my body for how it was that day, in that moment. I also started to heavily meditate and learn to detach from my judgments and harsh critical thoughts.

During this time, I heard a woman talking about doing naked yoga. I couldn’t believe this… what?! Naked yoga!? It sounded so intriguing. I had to try it!

So, one day in my own home, completely alone, I undressed and stepped onto my mat. Seeing my naked body in the poses I had practiced hundreds of times, but now naked, was so intimate. It was like seeing my naked body for the first time. I’ll never forget how much I cried while moving from pose to pose and reciting the words “I love you” to the different parts of my body.

From there it all unraveled. During this time, several girlfriends who were photographers asked me to model for them. It was then that I really started to come face to face with all the parts of myself that I was so insecure about seeing, let alone someone else seeing!

I remember the day I was asked to pose nude for the first time, I rose to the occasion. It really added a deeper layer, or actually, it took all the layers off in my self-love journey!

I felt shy, timid, judgmental, and quite frankly, I had no idea what I was doing. But this feeling of awkwardness forced me to get grounded, to breathe, and to tap into the environment around me. I had to let go of what I looked like, and then I started to be playful and have fun!

When I first saw the photos, I was so embarrassed. It made me want to shrink and fade away. In time, as I continued to model, it became an ongoing journey of building confidence and learning to accept and love myself. I was drawn like a moth to a flame because I was embarking on something beyond my past experiences of fear, and it was transformative.

I went on to model nude several more times, in various settings: the forest, the lake, the desert, the hot springs, and indoor studios. It became an act of freedom to have my body turned into art. A wild woman was born!

I felt so free while modeling nude that it became a literal quest to overcome my insecurities and radically step into self-acceptance. To love my imperfections, to expose the raw and the unpolished parts of me.

Now, all these years later, I see that these photoshoots are much bigger than just me being naked. It’s alchemizing shame into confidence, hatred into self-love. It’s about being a seed of inspiration for others to express freedom and the power that’s found through vulnerability.

Naturally, we humans are creatures of comfort, but we do not grow and evolve when we stay in these zones. The power and healing that is on the other side of the familiar is immeasurable.

If you feel the burning heart’s desire to step into greater leadership, share your talents with the world, take the leap in your life, and step into the best ever evolving version of you. You can extract what I have talked about above and implement it into your life. This doesn’t mean you have to get naked too, although that’s one way to get radical about it!

Here are seven practices that you can implement into your self-care routines, morning or evening, to create greater self-love and boost your confidence.

6 Self-Love and Confidence Boosting Tools

1. Do mirror work with affirmations.

Speak affirmations—positive “I am” statements”—into the mirror. I am joy. I am fierce. I am beautiful. I am ready.Notice and allow. What emotions, thoughts, physical sensations, or memories come up? Tuning into what these statements trigger inside you can help you identify areas for healing.

For example, if you don’t believe you’re beautiful, why? What does beauty mean to you? When did you first start believing this? What happened, and who else was involved? What proof do you have that this is just a belief, not fact?

2. Practice naked yoga.

Roll out your mat at home, turn on music, light candles, and enjoy!

You might feel uncomfortable doing this. You might focus on all the parts of your body you dislike and how you imagine you look while doing the poses. Embrace the fact that it’s just you—there’s no one to impress or please—so you truly can just be in your body, without judging it. Connecting with your body is the first step to accepting it, and accepting it is the first step to loving it.

3. Seek discomfort.

Do things that feel (just a little) scary, intimidating, and unfamiliar to you. If you’re naturally shy, start a conversation with a stranger. If you don’t usually speak in meetings, offer a suggestion. Put yourself in situations to stretch and impress yourself. There’s nothing that will create confidence faster.

4. Try something new.

Take a class, join a club, try a new hobby. Do something you’ve always dreamed of trying, or something you envy other people for doing.  Even if you’re not “good at it,” the fact that you tried builds courage.

5. Pamper yourself.

Get your hair/nails done, have a spa day, wine and dine yourself. Every time you take care of yourself or do something nice for yourself, you reinforce that you deserve it.

6. Try a nude photoshoot.

This can be done completely privately, photographed by you, or it can be as adventurous as you want. The choice is yours! Just be sure to choose a photographer you trust, someone who understands you’re doing this for self-empowerment and won’t pressure you into doing anything that you don’t feel comfortable with.

Not only have these steps helped me cultivate a lifetime partnership of love with myself, but they are also proven practices of transformation!

I could have easily stayed in my comfort zone instead of stepping into that muddy, cold river naked, but I was so inspired it beckoned me to step into the unknown, because I knew it meant stepping into greater power.

This is your sign to lean into those juicy discomforts, to find power in vulnerability, to say yes and live fearlessly!

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About Naga Rising

Naga Rising is a self-empowerment author and self-love influencer based in Denver, Colorado. She is dedicated to helping women reignite their feminine power through the most effective tools and methods that she has experienced. Sign up for her free weekly inspirational newsletter via her website. You can find her on Instagram here.

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3 Lifestyle Changes I Made to Overcome Dissociative Panic Attacks

“There is no greater wealth in this world than peace of mind.” ~Unknown

A few years ago, I had what could safely be deemed a “bad year.” My live-in partner left me out of the blue, I became un(der)employed and racked with debt, I got in a car accident that totaled my car, and then…my dog died.

After the year that I’d had, the death of that dog, my most treasured friend, was the final straw. It was the final straw for believing that things might turn around soon, and it was the final straw for my mental health.

Shortly after her death, I started experiencing what I now know were dissociative panic attacks. At the time, however, I thought that I was going crazy, dying, and that my spirit was detached from my body. A feeling you can probably only understand if you, too, experience panic attacks and have felt derealization before.

For a long time, I suffered. And wallowed. And gave up. But after about six months of living in this nightmarish state of near-constant dissociation and depersonalization, I had a moment of clarity. I knew that I had to give it my all to get better, no matter how long it took, because the alternative was bad.

A panic attack is the ultimate manifestation of feeling a lack of control—feeling like you’re going to die, like you’re going crazy, like you’re disembodied… and there’s nothing you can do about it.

So I started my healing process by looking for ways to take back dribs and drabs of control in my life.

It didn’t happen overnight, but I am extremely grateful to say that it’s been over two years since I’ve had a panic attack. Something I never thought I’d be able to say when I was in the throes of the disorder. So how did I do it? I would love to share that with you here.

These are the three tools that I believe had the biggest impact on healing my dissociative panic disorder.

Adopting an Anti-Inflammation Diet

Inflammation is the response our bodies have to foods that irritate our digestive system, and the amount of inflammation in your body has a direct impact on brain-functioning. According to Psychology Today, there is an undeniable correlation between inflammation in the gut and mental health disorders like anxiety, bi-polar disorder, and depression.

I cut out gluten and alcohol completely (both notoriously inflammatory) and would have cut out dairy too except that I’d already done that a few years earlier for other reasons.

Looking back, I think adopting this new diet was effective in more than one way… Cutting out alcohol was not only helpful in soothing inflammation, but it also allowed me to become much more clear-headed right out of the gate. I was never a huge drinker, but eliminating the ten to twelve weekly drinks I did have was enough to notice an instant improvement in the evenness of my emotional state throughout the day.

Another surprise benefit was that making an intentional choice about the guidelines of my diet gave me back a sense of agency in my life because with every meal, I knew I was making an intentional choice about what would go in my body and why.

Progressive-Overload Weight Training

Unfortunately, weight training still seems to feel “off-limits” to many of us. There’s a rampant gym culture in our society, and it feels like either you’re in or you’re out. However, I learned during this journey to mental health that once you get “in,” it becomes clear that nothing and no one was ever really keeping you out!

But why did I decide it was important to find my way “in” in the first place? To be honest, this one was a happy accident. I knew that it was important to start moving my body again, but it was January 2021, which meant it was too cold to exercise outside, and group fitness was still not an option thanks to the pandemic. Going to the gym, however, wearing a mask, was.

What I discovered from my religious gym routine, and my dedication to learning how to weight train as a means to overcome feeling so awkward and uncomfortable during every workout, is that weight training has the powerful effect of connecting your mind to your body. Something I didn’t realize had been lacking for me.

It’s impossible to lift heavy weights without becoming deeply aware of the connection between your mental cues, your breath, and your muscles.

Dissociative panic disorder is a nasty feedback loop of feeling dissociated and disconnected, which is scary, and leads to our body trying to overcome that fear by dissociating and disconnecting. Developing a weightlifting routine created an interruption in that debilitating cycle and, over time, reminded me that I am firmly rooted in my body and that I have control over my physical reality.

Meditation 

When I first started experiencing dissociation, depersonalization, and derealization, meditation was absolutely not the right answer for me. In fact, attempting to meditate only made me feel worse—like I was on the brink of leaving my physical body behind entirely.

However, once I regained a little bit of trust with my mind and body through other practices and knew that I would, in fact, not float away, I started using meditation to further the work I was doing in other places.

Since I had discovered through weightlifting the importance of strengthening my connection to my body, the first meditations I employed were for deepening that body-awareness (also called somatic awareness or interoceptive awareness.) My entire goal was to become more familiar and friendly with my body so that I could remain grounded in my physical self throughout the day.

Later, once I was feeling healthier and more optimistic about a panic attack-free future, I also began to employ meditations for future-visualization. I would tune into and sit with the feelings of connection, safety, and purpose as I allowed my mind to create pictures of my future life. In this way, I began to rewire my brain to understand, look for, and create positive emotions again.

Now, more than two years after I made the life-changing decision to do anything it took to heal my panic disorder, I still fall back on all three of these tools to keep me healthy. I avoid inflammatory foods, I hit the gym regularly (and move my body in other ways), and I try to meditate every single morning.

I know it can feel overwhelming to start a new routine, but none of these lifestyle changes will do anything but enhance your life. It’s worth it to try. I hope that a few months from now you, too, can look back at your panic attack days as just a difficult, but closed chapter in your life.

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About Mary Seibert

Mary Seibert is a Health Coach in Las Vegas, Nevada, dedicated to helping people harness their full potential in every aspect of health and wellbeing. Mary is the owner of That Intuitive Magic, a blog and coaching space for anyone interested in holistic self-development. Sign up for the newsletter here and never miss a chance to be inspired.

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Finding the Calm Inside: How to Cultivate Self-Awareness to Create Inner Peace

“When I look back on my life, I see pain, mistakes, and heartache. When I look in the mirror, I see strength, learned lessons, and pride in myself.” ~Unknown

Years ago, I wrote in my journal: “My life has no meaning. I’m sick of being miserable, of struggling and having to prop myself up. I’m tired of being alone, tired of feeling like I’m wasting my life, tired of feeling like a loser.”

I was that friend who always borrowed money, who was always in crisis or calling at 2 a.m. and saying dramatically, “I’m not okay.”

There are few pieces of self-knowledge worse than being aware of exhausting people or driving them away with neediness.

In 2010, I decided I would try to rewire my wildly anxious brain for inner peace. As I look back on how much has changed (everything!), the throughline of my journey has been “developing self-awareness.” The more I develop awareness about how this mind and body work, the more empowered and peaceful I feel.

Here are some of the key lessons I learned on the path to inner peace.

1. Fill your own cup first.

I grew in a culture where the social contract went something like this: “I’ll perform social niceties to protect you from uncomfortable feelings, and you’ll do the same.” (I was really not good at this.)

Nobody told the truth about how they were feeling or what they needed, and in turn, that made true communication or connection impossible. As an adult, therefore, I turned to other people for my emotional well-being, when the truth was that the only solution lay inside me.

One day, when I was on a bus to a freelance job in downtown Vancouver, I received a voicemail that I’d been let go and that my last check would be mailed to me. I’d been counting on that check; I didn’t have the $20 I needed to get home on the ferry. In a panic, I called a former colleague, who met me at Starbucks and, though she was visibly annoyed, lent me the money to get home.

On my way home, I had an epiphany: I could offer to myself the focus and energy I’d been so eagerly forcing on others. In the clunky vocabulary of my growth at that time, I called it my “me first” project.

I began meditating and, as I inhaled, I called different parts of my soul back to me, kind of like ‘defragmenting’ a Windows PC. To my surprise, not only did I begin to feel whole for the first time, I also felt calmer and more confident about my resilience.

If our well-being depends on someone else being comfortable, we will never feel peaceful. We have zero control over how anyone else feels, thinks, or behaves. There are infinite factors that go into each person’s mood, and each of us is responsible, ultimately, for our own well-being.

That doesn’t mean we can’t work to change systems of oppression, but if we’re relying on conditions being the way we want in order to feel peaceful… we could be waiting a long, long time.

2. Stay on the razor’s edge of this moment.

I used to call myself a “Walter Mitty,” in reference to the James Thurber short story (and Ben Stiller movie) about a man who constantly fantasized about living different lives than the one he had, like being an emergency room surgeon or a fighter pilot.

“I want to be mindful,” I wrote in my journal, “but my mind runs all over.” I hadn’t yet understood that mindfulness doesn’t just happen; I had to put in the work.

That’s what the brain does, though. It thinks. It ruminates. It creates stories. My mind still runs away with me sometimes, but over the process of more than a decade, I’ve become accustomed to its machinations, and it can no longer devastate me with thoughts of self-loathing.

Presence is about accepting the facts of a situation, not our interpretation of the facts. I find it particularly helpful to remember this when thoughts are swirling through my head like a tornado, or I have sensations associated with anxiety, like a racing heart or tight chest.

To bring myself back into the moment, I notice external sensations: In this moment, there is air against my arms. In this moment, I can feel my feet on the ground. In this moment, I smell a mixture of food grease and roses.

I don’t label any of this “good” or “bad”; it just is. Focusing on reality, rather than thoughts, interrupts the pattern of rumination in the mind.

One of my favorite presence practices comes from Eckhart Tolle: Close your eyes and rub your hands together briskly for fifteen seconds. Then separate your hands and focus all your energy on the vibration in your hands. If thoughts arise, redirect the mind back to the sensations in your hands.

This takes mental energy away from loops of rumination and places it back in the body, which—unlike the mind—is always present.

3. Learn to observe your thoughts.

The difference between my self-loathing rumination of the past and my present sense of peace when my mind is a runaway horse comes down to practice in observing my thoughts. Most of us think constantly, and we’re not aware that we’re thinking. Thoughts enter and leave our minds continually, but we have to pay attention to those thoughts in order to understand that thoughts are not who we are, and thereby find peace.

Thinking is like breathing. Sometimes we think in order to solve a particular problem. Other times, thoughts just appear and disappear like signals on a car radio in the mountains. We don’t purposely generate those thoughts; they just appear.

As I learned to meditate, I became used to seeing thoughts floating in and out of my mind. I learned that they don’t last unless I put some effort into keeping them around, like thinking, “This shouldn’t be happening” or “I don’t like this situation.” Neither of those are helpful, as the situation—whatever it is—is happening.

Then I tried watching my thoughts in real-time, off the cushion. It took me several months to begin noticing my thoughts. At first, I walked around with my head tilted, like a dog trying to figure out where a sound is coming from. I was determined to catch myself in the act of thinking, but because I’d spent forty-four years thinking nonstop without being aware of it, this took a great deal of practice.

Sometimes I’d feel terrible, and I’d put on my investigative cap to discover what thought was causing the distress. Other times, I’d be thinking for half an hour before I’d suddenly snap out of it and go, “Aha! I’m thinking!”

It was such a revelation to understand that I am not my thoughts. Thoughts arise within this field of mind and body I call “me,” but they are not part and parcel of this being. Being trapped believing thoughts is a special kind of hell; when we understand that those thoughts aren’t who we are, it creates a space in which we can begin to breathe and to climb out of hell.

4. Separate facts from stories.

I’ve been a creative writer for more than thirty years. I’ve always enjoyed writing humor, because humor requires placing a judgment on a situation. I wrote essays and comedy sketches (and even did stand-up briefly) about how awful or hilarious or terrible a given situation was.

Long ago, when a beloved therapist was diagnosed with a recurrence of melanoma and closed her practice, I laugh-cried that …And My Therapist Has Cancer would make a great book title. I felt terrible for her, of course, but not as bad as I felt for myself, losing one of the best therapists I’d ever had. OF COURSE this had happened to me.

Except that it hadn’t. I could have chosen to focus on gratitude for my own health, or for what this woman had already given me. I could have seen this as impermanence, and let go with grace. But I didn’t have those skills yet.

When I became serious about finding inner peace, I stopped writing humor and essays for several years. At some level, I understood that repeating those stories—each one designed to be witty but also to make me the righteous victim—continued to wire my brain for feeling bad.

Marshall Rosenberg’s book Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life talks about separating facts from our interpretations of the facts. For months on end, I noticed my responses to different situations based on the stories I was telling myself. Then I’d pull back and practice listing “the facts in evidence.” These often had little to do with the stories I’d created.

Making judgments is so automatic, like thinking or breathing, that we don’t even notice we’re doing it.

I began to develop a vocabulary of my feelings and needs. Having lived so long from the neck up, I had to learn how to identify my emotions, and to understand which needs were giving rise to which feelings.

Every human on the planet has the same basic needs: to be safe, to be healthy, to be autonomous and loved (among others). When those needs are met, generally speaking, we feel good or at least peaceful. When those needs aren’t met, we might feel anger, anxiety, depression, or resentment. Learning to identify our feelings and needs in each moment is a huge step toward self-awareness and inner peace.

Ultimately, this comes down to taking full responsibility.

We have to take responsibility for our own well-being because no one else can heal for us. We can’t control people, situations, or events. Heck, we can’t even control our own thoughts or feelings! But we can examine our thoughts and feelings, be more deliberate with our actions, and practice awareness.

Rather than asking the universe to help us like a lost child, we can realize that we are part of the universe—we’re made of the same chemical compounds; we share DNA with all living things—and we will contribute to our own healing.

This is important so that we don’t project trauma responses from our childhoods onto others, and we don’t repeat old patterns or contribute to systems of oppression. Developing self-awareness is taking radical responsibility for our own well-being, because if our inner peace depends on what others say or do, or certain conditions, we’ll never find it.

Self-awareness is a necessary skill for finding inner peace and living from our wiser nature, yet it’s a skill that isn’t taught in schools or even in most families. That means that it’s on us to cultivate it in ourselves.

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About Sarah Chauncey

Sarah Chauncey is the author of P.S. I Love You More Than Tuna and a nonfiction writer, editor and writing coach. She writes Living the Mess, a newsletter that helps readers slow down, live deliberately and find inner peace. She also writes the newsletter Resonant Storytelling, which focuses on the craft of writing.

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5 Painful Effects of Parentification Trauma and How I’ve Overcome Them

“Sometimes people wound us because they’re wounded and tell us we’re broken because that’s how they feel, but we don’t have to believe them.” ~Lori Deschene

I’ve always been proud of how I can handle life so well. I’m great at managing responsibilities and taking care of others, but I’m not so great at being aware of my own needs. It’s part of being a highly sensitive individual and growing up with parentification trauma.

Overcoming parentification can take years. If you’re like me, you might not even realize it’s something you experienced until you’re well into adulthood. More people should know about this form of trauma to process it and thrive beyond its reach.

What Is a Highly Sensitive Person?

Knowing how our brains process interpersonal relationships is essential to understanding how we can heal from things.

I grew up with a mom who was quick to remind me that I felt things very deeply. I was always the first member of my family to cry when I was happy and get sad about upsetting events.

Certain textures, light sources, and noise levels also made me uncomfortable, even when others were fine. Feeling a suede couch under my legs made my skin crawl. Ceiling lights gave me anxiety, and the microwave beeping triggered my flight-or-fight instinct.

I learned about highly sensitive individuals when I started going to therapy after college. They’re people like me—we’re more easily stimulated by our environment and perceive things more deeply on instinct. Emotions become magnified in our hearts, and we may have more empathy for others than our relatives.

Although researchers can identify some genetic markers in highly sensitive people (HSPs), environmental factors also play a role in our emotional processing.

What does parentification have to do with HSPs? Let’s dive into what that specific trauma is before connecting it to our more sensitive minds.

What Is Parentification?

Parentification is a toxic family dynamic.

I experienced the instrumental version of it when my younger brother was born. When my mom needed more help around the house, our family roles reversed. She asked me to clean, cook meals, and do yard work while she watched my brother or went to work.

I was only eight years old.

There’s also the emotional side of parentification. Emotionally immature parents might treat their child as a confidant or counselor. Sharing too much information or burdening their kid with heavy emotions may be challenging for them to process.

We live with the effects of either or both types of parentification in adulthood, even if we don’t realize it. I dealt with the impacts before I even knew there was anything to overcome, but getting professional help made starting the hard work possible.

What Can Cause Parentification?

Numerous home videos on chunky VHS tapes in my basement prove that my parents were so excited to have me. How can parents go from desperately wanting to love a baby to raising them in a traumatic family dynamic?

Unfortunately, there are numerous reasons why parentification happens. Our parents may have grown up in households where they didn’t learn tools to process their emotions healthily. Their parents might have demonstrated emotional parentification and unknowingly taught them a future parenting style.

They might have been in an abusive relationship once, lost a loved one to an illness, or cared for someone with an addiction.

They could also have experienced trauma that they never processed. Instead of talking with a therapist or accepting their feelings, they could have repressed their emotions and taught themselves an unhealthy way to model emotional intelligence.

We might not always get answers, either. My parents don’t talk about their lives before my brother and I arrived. I might never know what caused their emotional parentification, which takes work to accept.

What Is Adaptive vs. Destructive Parentification?

Adaptive parentification is a short-term form of this dynamic. If you live with your dad and he’s injured in a car accident, he might be unable to walk for a week. During that time, you cook for your siblings and help them with their homework.

In that case, you’d take on parental responsibilities that are inappropriate for your age, but it would be for a limited time.

Destructive parentification is when this dynamic happens long term. The violation of your childhood and emotional boundaries remains constant, leading to adverse effects that can last a lifetime.

What Are the Effects of Parentification?

Although I highly recommend finding a therapist specializing in trauma and family dynamics, you don’t have to wait for an appointment to reflect on your past. These are a few signs you were parentified as a child that you might never have considered.

1. Being Overly Attentive to Responsibilities

Becoming responsible for someone else at a young age can make us overly attentive to survival needs. When I started caring for my mom and brother at eight years old, I learned that if I didn’t keep up with meals and laundry, my family wouldn’t eat or have clean clothes.

Our HSP minds start becoming anxious about the ramifications when we fall short, have a bad day, or forget something on our to-do list. As a result, one of the effects of parentification for me was never snapping out of survival mode.

I struggle to reserve time to relax in the evenings. Sometimes it’s even hard to recognize my own physical or mental needs. If my college roommates weren’t keeping up with our apartment chores, I’d vacuum and do dishes even if my bladder was painfully full or I hadn’t eaten all day.

Putting others’ needs before your own at all times isn’t a healthy way to live. It’s also never fun to feel annoyed when someone tells me to relax or get anxious when I have free time. We deserve to care for ourselves and unwind just like everyone else.

2. Living with One or More Addictions

People raising kids with an unhealthy parentification style may say, “That’s not what you feel” when their child expresses anger at an upsetting situation. They may accuse the kid of getting angry for no reason and not respond until they let things go.

I lived through those experiences for years. The saddest part is how my anger, justified or not, had nowhere to go. It turned inward, creating a never-ending cycle of self-criticism and hatred.

As I got older, the self-hatred developed into an eating disorder. Other people start self-harming or using addictive substances. Sometimes the coping mechanisms help release negative emotions, but they’re ultimately only self-destructive.

Overcoming parentification might mean recognizing unhealthy coping styles and learning to recognize the scary emotions waiting underneath them. Guidance from a licensed therapist makes processing and healing possible.

3. Dissociating for Varying Periods

Parentification comes with triggers. My mom became passive-aggressive when I failed to predict what she wanted me to do, so now signs like sarcasm and subtle digs can make my mind freeze. When my thoughts stop and my body goes numb, dissociation begins.

Dissociating is a way our minds cope with traumatic stress. It allows us to disconnect from uncomfortable feelings or situations because our brain wants to protect itself. People don’t always develop dissociative tendencies while living with parentification, but it’s a potential effect.

When I lived at home, sometimes these dissociative periods would last a few hours or an entire day. I couldn’t recall getting home from school or doing anything until I went to bed, even though I had finished everything for the day.

Now that I’m out of that environment, my mind starts dissociating when I’m triggered by the mannerisms my mom had. I can also experience it before or during a visit with her.

4. Living with Anxiety

Whether you dealt with instrumental or emotional parentification, you could have resulting social anxiety. I get anxious in certain settings because I instinctively try to predict others’ needs. I’m constantly evaluating what’s safest to discuss or changing environmental factors, like closing blinds by the dinner table before the sun sets so it doesn’t shine in my friend’s eyes.

We could fear retribution based on how our parents responded during childhood or worry about causing even a minor upset in a relationship. Eventually, that anxiety can also direct inward and affect our self-worth.

Anxiety can also cause us to push our feelings away. Being good at compartmentalizing is one of the signs you were parentified as a child. Becoming anxious about feelings can result in years of ignoring the pain we need to process.

5. Repeatedly Getting into Unhealthy Relationships

Kids learn social skills from interacting with their parents. One of the effects of parentification is developing unhealthy future relationships based on those formed with parents.

This has affected my connections with friends and partners. I’ve unknowingly formed unhealthy attachments that can start in a positive place, but eventually, it always feels like I exist to fix their problems. They’re always using me as an advice machine or to care for them like a pseudo-parent.

Here’s an example if you’re not sure this applies to you.

I met a friend in high school, and we became close. Later, we went to the same college and became roommates. We’d been friends for so long, it felt smarter than rooming with strangers.

About a month after moving in with her, I noticed her behavior changed in ways that violated my boundaries. She expected me to do the dishes, clean up after her boyfriends, and pay all the bills for our apartment. There was always an excuse that sounded legitimate, but it made me feel like I had become her mom.

However, I put up with it for a year. I could never enforce my boundaries because the parentification stress of not perfectly caring for my family kept me in silent fear. I felt unseen and worthless, so I had to rebuild my self-worth when we moved out the following summer.

My friend had never treated me like that before we were roommates. While there were things we both could have done differently after moving into that apartment, I couldn’t get myself out of that unhealthy relationship due to parentification trauma. It can trap us in toxic dynamics with friends and partners, even when we can recognize an unjust situation.

Is Parentification Abuse?

Parentification might not result in physical beatings, but it’s still abuse. It mentally and emotionally takes advantage of kids.

It violates our boundaries by removing our right to have childhoods and handle responsibilities appropriate for our ages. Parentification may override our boundaries in ways that make us feel unable to say no to certain requests.

Parentification can also cause neglect, which is another form of abuse. Our parents fail to provide for our basic needs as children with no power or autonomy.

The psychological wounds can last through adulthood. They did for me. The effects harm our future relationships and self-worth, ultimately deteriorating our quality of life if we don’t get help to process our history.

Tips for Overcoming Parentification

The good news is that parentification doesn’t have to influence your mind and relationships forever. Here’s what I did to start reversing the damage.

1. Find a licensed therapist.

People experience the effects of parentification in adulthood in various ways. If we could reverse those effects ourselves, very few of us would even be talking about that kind of trauma.

I found a licensed therapist specializing in family trauma when I came to peace with the idea that I couldn’t repair the damage through sheer willpower. She knew how toxic dynamics like parentification affect a child’s development and therapeutic ways to process my past.

Talk therapy helped me get comfortable discussing my traumas. When I was ready, we started eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy through tapping and bilateral stimulation noises. Although EMDR recalled specific emotional pain, giving myself space to finally feel my compartmentalized feelings and deconstruct them with a therapist allowed me to heal.

Connect with a therapist to talk about how they can help you. They may recommend a similar treatment path or resources like dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). It depends on their training and your specific experiences.

2. Listen to your physiological needs.

My therapist also showed me how I don’t listen to or honor my mental and physical needs. I don’t let myself feel sad when I’m hurt or rest when I’m tired.

We developed strategies so I know how to recognize those feelings. I also have resources at home for self-care, like asking my partner for help and doing evening activities that don’t center around a survival responsibility. I enjoy embroidery and baths with lavender bath bombs because I learned to invest time in myself.

Not feeling worthy of tending to your needs is one of the effects of parentification. Therapy and journaling help reverse that. They become essential stress management tools that ultimately build your self-worth and self-esteem.

You may also work with a doctor or nutritionist to get assistance with coping mechanisms like recovering from an eating disorder or addiction if those are part of your history.

3. Prioritize your self-care.

I used to fully support the idea of self-care for other people, but I never thought it applied to me. My therapist taught me how to give myself the freedom to relax, have fun, try new hobbies, and move on to other ones.

Overcoming parentification requires believing in yourself, which may call for processing specific traumas. When you start recognizing how your brain works, you can use self-care habits to support your healing from those unhealthy inner dynamics.

My experience with parentification taught me that I existed to take care of others. Therapy showed me that I’m on this planet to experience joy and that I experienced a childhood injustice. Accepting that made giving myself breaks in the evenings or leaving responsibilities for another day easier.

If I deserve to thrive, I deserve to rest. This was processing that had to happen before I could enjoy self-care activities without guilt or anxiety.

You can reach the same point with help from a therapist. You’ll learn to support yourself and become your biggest cheerleader as you determine how you like to relax and have fun.

Defeat Parentification in Adulthood

Parentification can make us feel erased and worthless. It’s a childhood trauma that people don’t often realize is harmful, but it doesn’t have to influence your quality of life forever.

Connect with a therapist and they’ll show you how to rebuild yourself. You’ll start overcoming parentification by processing your past. Remember that even when it hurts, you can make things better.

You don’t have to earn your healing. You only have to take the first step forward by asking for help.

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Riding the Wave of Rage: How Mindfulness Became My Lifesaver

“Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is the only condition for happiness. If, in our heart, we still cling to anything—anger, anxiety, or possessions—we cannot be free.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

My anger has gotten the best of me more than I care to admit. I’ve smashed windows, broken chairs, had movie-worthy brawls on the beach, and said gut-wrenching stuff that has brought people I care about to tears.

I grew up when mental health was not taken seriously, nor was it even on my radar. I just took my wild nature to mean I was screwed up and hopeless. And sadly, the thought of seeking support only brought up more anger. It felt like I was weak, pathetic, and a loser for being unable to sort my life out.

So, without understanding why my emotions were such a rollercoaster (undiagnosed depression and type II  bipolar disorder), I didn’t know where else to turn except to my dear ole friend Sailor Jerry, the purveyor of fine spiced rum. Alcohol only fueled my emotional outbursts, exacerbating the problem.

Knowing that kind of anger lived inside me brings on an emotional blubbering mess of a show. Because overcoming the guilt that came from identifying with those actions and feeling like that’s who I was as a man took years of therapy.

It feels so different than the person I am now.

I understood in therapy that it’s not my fault per se, but it is my responsibility to do something about it.

Nothing has driven that lesson home more than being a dad.

And if my daughter is anything like my wife and me, we got ourselves a wild child ready to test our limits.

Living with Canadian winters means it’s inevitable that, at some point, you’ll lose control of your car. I once did a complete 360 on the highway on the way to work as I lost control on black ice. I didn’t think; I just acted based on what I learned in driving school.

If you’re driving your car and it starts to skid, you go with the flow of your vehicle and move in the direction of the skid, not against it. That’s how you regain control, even if it seems counterintuitive.

Anger is the black ice of emotions. You’re often thrown into a spiral of anger before you even have the chance to mindfully be aware that you’re losing control. That’s why I’ve found the practice of mindfulness and daily meditation life transforming.

The anger never goes away because you never stop experiencing the emotions of life, but through the practice of mindfulness, you create space between the stimulus (my wife and I fighting, exhausted from a sleepless toddler, and businesses to run) and the response (thinking it’s time to end the marriage).

You can choose to respond and act differently because you see the trigger for what it is for you.

Think of it like a gigantic pause button that allows you to slip into Matrix mode. You see the stimulus, pause for presence, and respond with intention. My daughter is not purposely trying to throw our lives into chaos. My wife and I aren’t fighting because we no longer love each other. We’re dealing with the tornado nature of a toddler, running businesses, and being pushed to our limits.

It’s better to respectfully and constructively communicate your feelings with your partner if you plan to stay married. I get it. Easier said than done, but we need to believe that we’re not inherently flawed and beyond help.

My previous relationships all had their fair share of fights (stimulus), resulting in my doom spiralling into believing it was time to burn it all down (response). Without a pause between stimulus and response, the middle became a breeding ground for an unconscious poison cocktail of guilt, shame, and a need to escape the uncomfortable reality of what I was facing.

Let’s be honest. I wasn’t making any effort to change. Repairing a relationship without tools is damn near impossible. Through therapy, I gained a deeper understanding of my emotional struggles and the root causes of my anger. Now, I have a fully stocked toolbelt that I feel comfortable using.

And that’s where the power of mindfulness comes in. You learn to know and trust yourself well enough to tap into a greater energy around you, and you become calm in any situation. You see the black ice, grip the wheel, and control the situation by keeping yourself present with the stimulus.

When faced with a challenge, do you possess the mental flexibility and self-awarenessawareness to remain centered and connected with that space between stimulus and response, and move forward in a way you can be proud of?

Or do you struggle against challenges, only to give up because negative self-talk and conditioned thinking compel you to repeat the same destructive pattern, leaving you guilty and ashamed?

I’m not saying I never get angry anymore. But I sure as hell try my best not to throw rocket fuel on the fire. Addressing the root of the problem—undiagnosed depression and type II bipolar disorder—helped me better understand how to cope with a rollercoaster of emotions and feelings that previously felt beyond my control.

Life is a lot like being in a high-stress athletic event. The ability to react to another player’s actions without emotional triggers often makes the difference between making a wise or a poor decision and ultimately winning or losing the game.

The only difference is that the game of life truly never ends. We will only lose if we stop improving and holding ourselves to a higher standard for how we show up in the world. Taking full responsibility for our lives can be terrifying, but it also creates a sense of personal freedom. This is because it allows us to take action toward becoming the people we know we’re capable of being.

To thrive, you must mindfully choose to go with the flow of your emotions and drive toward anger, shame, and guilt, not away from them. You must sit with these feelings, pause to recognize how you’ve been triggered, and consciously choose a response you’ll feel good about. This way, you regain control of your life by releasing yourself from a pattern of actions that no longer serves you. Remember, practice makes progress.

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About Chris Wilson

Chris Wilson is a bipolar creative with a knack for personal development. He geeks out on productivity, minimalism, and enjoying life. He runs Simplify Your Why, where he shares lessons learned on overcoming his battles with depression, type II bipolar, and entrepreneurship. He created a free course for anyone who wants to lead a happier, more productive life of simplicity (with less stress). Click here to access it.

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3 Lessons on Finding Love That I Learned When Looking for My Soulmate

“Your soulmate is not someone who completes you. No, a soulmate is someone who inspires you to complete yourself.” ~Bianca Sparacino

For years I was in what seemed like an endless search for my soulmate—someone who would understand me, love me unconditionally, and share my values and interests.

It felt like I needed someone in my life to feel happy, fulfilled, and whole.

I went on a handful of dates, but I got friend-zoned at times, rejected at others, and ended up with the wrong people the rest of the time.

What pained me the most was how I repeatedly ended up with people who were emotionally unavailable, uninterested in a committed relationship, or simply weren’t a good match for me. And I couldn’t understand why. At some point, I thought I was just unlucky in love.

In retrospect, however, it was in some ways my fault. I wasn’t unlucky in love; I sucked at dating and relationships because my life sucked.

What does that mean?

If I had focused less on finding a partner and more on becoming the kind of person I wanted to attract, my dating and love life would have been a lot easier.

After I worked more on myself and cultivated the positive qualities I wanted in a partner—such as kindness, compassion, authenticity, and self-love, as I worked on healing my past wounds and releasing the limiting beliefs that were holding me back—my love life changed for the better.

And now, I’m living the dream with the love of my life, Sandra, who I met in my senior year in college.

Focusing on who I was instead of what I wanted helped me attract a compatible partner, and I’ve become a better version of myself as I’ve continued growing over the years.

You Need to Take More Responsibility

People often say, “You’ll find love when you’re not looking,” but I’ve always believed that a closed mouth doesn’t get fed.

This is why I was so proactive in searching for a romantic partner for years.

But in the wake of countless disappointments, I completely gave up and adopted a more passive approach, telling myself that the universe would either deliver me a soulmate or not.

For months, I quit putting myself in situations where I was likely to meet like-minded people. I asked fewer love interests out, went on fewer dates, and tried to hold onto obviously wrong relationships (more on that later).

I got more and more disillusioned with dating and relationships. Sometimes I thought I just wasn’t ‘destined’ to find ‘the one’; other times I told myself I just had to wait until the universe handed me my ‘perfect mate.’

I left everything to God, fate, or destiny, which gave me something to blame for my disappointing love life, when I should have been taking responsibility for what I could control instead of focusing on what I couldn’t.

Life will probably not hand most of us our ‘perfect mates,’ which means unless we’re proactive, we’ll most likely miss out on opportunities to connect with others who could be good matches for us.

That’s why I believe we should put ourselves out there in the dating world. We can do this by using online dating apps (even though they can be frustrating), attending social events, joining clubs or groups focused on our interests, and being more open and approachable.

Cliche, I know, but better than living passively and waiting for some supernatural forces to bring the ‘perfect partners’ to us.

No, You Don’t Need to Reorder Your Life to Find Love

I used to be obsessed with finding a soulmate who would not only complete me, but also enjoy a fairytale romance with me.

I was so fixated on finding ‘the one’ that I had to reorder my life around my search.

I even resorted to changing my personality to fit what every one of my then-love interests would want in a partner.

I sacrificed a lot just to ensure I was in a relationship, and I didn’t realize how much of myself I was losing in the process.

Now, I no longer bend my life to make room for or be loved and accepted by someone else.

Because when I did this and eventually got into relationships with the people who I thought were the ‘best partners’ I could ever wish for, it often ended in pain and tears.

We weren’t even close to compatible. We either had different goals or our personalities clashed more often than not.

With each heartbreaking breakup, it was obvious (to everyone but me) that I had given up too much of myself and compromised too much to make things work.

It can’t be ‘true love’ if you have to sacrifice yourself in the process of finding and keeping it.

Don’t Force a Connection that Isn’t There

The inconvenient truth is that we can’t change reality just because we don’t want to accept it.

You might be putting a relationship on a pedestal and choosing to ignore obvious issues because you want to believe someone is perfect for you—maybe because you’re tired of looking, or because they seem like a good fit, and they just have to be ‘the one.’

But what if they’re not ‘the one’ because they don’t want to be?

When this happens, we might try hard to convince ourselves that someone is our soulmate even when they don’t reciprocate our feelings or treat us well, and generally act in ways that contradict their profession of love for us.

As a hopeless romantic to the core, I’ve met a few people who I strongly thought were the ones for me. But the one that had the most negative effects on me was the last girl I dated before I met Sandra.

She was smart and beautiful and had a way of making me feel like I was the only person in the world.

But as time went on, things started to seem different than I had expected them to.

It wasn’t because I had unrealistic expectations, unless it’s unrealistic to expect my partner to at least minimize canceling plans at the last minute or to care about my feelings.

Despite all of this, I couldn’t shake off the feeling that she was my soulmate and that we were meant to be together. I thought of her behaviors as a temporary phase and told myself things would get better if I just held on.

Sound familiar?

One big lesson I learned is that the people we’re so bent on convincing ourselves are our soulmates are actually the wrong people for us.

Because we all deserve someone who’ll appreciate us for who we really are.

To find that kind of love, we have to focus on being the kind of people we want to attract, take more responsibility for meeting new people (without sacrificing ourselves to hold onto them), and never settle for less than we deserve. When we do these things, we stand a better chance of finding that special love we’ve been hoping for.

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About John Emmanuel

John Emmanuel is a results-obsessed relationship blogger and founder of Top Love Hacks, dedicated to helping you level up your dating and relationship game by motivating you to be in control of your love life. Download his 27 No Bullshit Love Hacks: A Toolkit That'll Help Elevate Your Love Life

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How I Calm and Release Intense Emotions of Anger, Sadness, and Frustration

“You don’t have to be positive all the time. It’s perfectly okay to feel sad, angry, annoyed, frustrated, scared, or anxious. Having feelings doesn’t make you a ‘negative person.’ It makes you human.” ~Lori Deschene

In November, I was on an emotional roller coaster full of sudden unexplainable fits of anger, hysterically crying for no reason, barely sleeping, feeling urges to physically kick, hit, and scream.

One of the main triggers was when my partner would go out without me.

He’d go out with his friends to play pool and I would immediately shut down, shut him out, and turn inward.

Lying in bed, my thoughts would spiral out of control.

What if he gets hurt?
He’s a grown man playing pool; he’s not going to get hurt.

Is he picking up other women?
No. He loves me.

Why didn’t he invite me?
Having time to ourselves is something I value.

We’re in a loving, committed relationship, and have been together for four years, so why hasn’t he proposed?
Wait, do I actually want to get married? Or has society just told me I want to get married?

Why hasn’t he texted me?
He’s being present with his friends. That is a good thing.

What is wrong with me? Why am I being petulant, controlling, and jealous? Why can’t I support his time with friends like he does for me? On and on and on…

Then the physical sensations would take over my body.

I’d feel hot, my heart would beat quickly, and I wanted to escape my body. I’d have the urge to kick and scream and punch. I could not relax.

I tried to quell my emotions and rely on the quiet, calm part of me to remedy the situation with my go-to tactics of meditating, focusing on breathing, and reading, but all of those failed miserably.

I could not figure out why my usual calm, optimistic self, who is able to quickly pinpoint negative thoughts and change them, was not doing her job.

My inability to understand what the hell was happening made me feel even more angry, frustrated, and helpless.

So, through talk-therapy, coaching, and journaling, I turned to my inner child, who I know wants to be seen, heard, and loved, but who has erected walls to protect her heart.

Communing with my inner child offered me a giant release, and a few discoveries:

In my relationship (and in my new business), I had a deep fear of abandonment and fear of the unknown.

My fear of abandonment was being activated because my partner and I had just finished eighteen months of travel during which we were together most of the time. I grew comfortable in our little refuge, secluded from the rest of the world.

And now, we were back in the real world, hanging out with people, adjusting to a new city and new jobs.

I felt like we didn’t spend any time together anymore. I had expected him to propose during our year of travel, but he didn’t. I thought he was pulling away from me.

The truth is, all of these were made up stories in my head.

In reality, we still spent a lot of time together and we had gotten to know each other even more intimately and deeply during our year of travel. (And a proposal was right around the corner!) We were simply adjusting to a new way of living.

I also started to realize that I was desiring to express a part of me that I had never expressed.

The tears and physical discomfort were a sign that a part of me was being suppressed. Those parts that I was suppressing were the parts of me that I had been told were too much… too emotional, too loud, too big.

I was taught that being stoic and quiet is a virtue.

I was taught that showing emotions is a sign of weakness.

I was taught that women are meant to be seen not heard.

I started to realize that it is actually a strength to express emotions, and that I am worthy of taking up space.

And I realized that my anger, frustration, and sadness could not be quelled and calmed through breathing and meditation; rather, I needed to become fortified in these intense emotions and express them in a healthy way.

Three tactics I use to be fortified in the difficult emotions of anger, frustration, and sadness are:

1. Shake it out. I bring my whole body into this and shake and stomp. It offers an instant release of tension.

2. Yell it out. I go in my car, turn up some music, and yell until my vocal cords feel tired. Afterward, I always think “wow, that felt good.”

3. Run it out. I never feel worse after a run, especially a run in the rain.

Each of these tactics is of a physical nature, because sometimes, our emotions are simply energy that needs to be moved through the body. (I suggest pairing these three somatic practices with mindset work to understand and move through your beliefs, doubts, and fears. In other words, get into the body and the mind!)

So, if you’re feeling intense emotions that you are unable to quell and calm, I invite you to match that emotional intensity with a healthy physical release.

And please know that fear of abandonment in our relationships is totally normal (it’s a survival instinct, which might also be exacerbated by childhood trauma), so release the self-judgment and give yourself a little grace.

(Also, I am happy to report that, at the time of writing, my fiancé is at his bachelor party, and I am one hundred percent not freaking out. Which is a result of therapy, mindset work, and somatic practice!)

We get to explore what is going on, and transmute that fear into a deeper love, more pleasure, and expanded intimacy.

So here’s to getting to know and expressing your full, perfectly imperfect, self!

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About Teresa Towey

Teresa Towey is a coach and mentor for women. She curates individual and group spaces to guide women in returning to their wild, visceral natures through connection to the body and the earth. She has a special focus in helping women express their sensuality and live in alignment with their menstrual cycles. Check out her website and follow her on Instagram. DM her to schedule a free 1:1 session!

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How to Heal through Metaphor: Tap into the Secret Language of Your Brain

“As soon as I allow the Universe to replace my fear-based beliefs with new perceptions, I receive a miracle.” ~Gabby Bernstein

As I was packing up my mother’s nursing home room after her death, I found a little heart-shaped stone that had the word “serenity” on it. I took it back to California with me and I hold it frequently. It’s heavy, solid, and soothing, and it reminds me of her.

I love the weight of that little stone.

When we’re grieving, heavy things are comforting. It’s not surprising that when we want to release stress, many people go for a mud bath. (Mud has weight, bringing a feeling of heaviness to the body.) Similarly, weighted blankets reduce anxiety and help us relax and fall asleep.

Because of our culture’s extreme focus on analytical thought, many of us dismiss the powerful wisdom and healing qualities of a simple embodied, felt sense… like the feeling of heavy.

That’s unfortunate because felt sense is the source of our intuition.

We may walk into a friend’s home and notice that it feels “peaceful” or “dark.” We might walk away from a conversation and feel “lit up” or “flat”. A new project at work may feel “too small” or “stuck” or “over our heads” or “flowing.” We may realize that it’s time for us to be “bigger” in our lives, or on the other hand, “smaller.” Or we’ll tell our friends, “I need to let go” or “I need to move on.”

Those are all examples of metaphor—the sensory, intuitive language of our right cerebral hemisphere. The right hemisphere is the part of our brain that seeks intimacy with the world. It doesn’t sit back and analyze things from a safe distance; it understands the world by getting up close and personal.

It feels its way.

Metaphor is also how we receive higher knowing. It’s how Spirit, the Divine, higher consciousness, or whatever you call that realm of higher wisdom, speaks to us.

Consciously or not, metaphor is how we learn, grow, and heal.

My First Experience with the Healing Power of Metaphor

When I was in my late twenties, I was involved in a head-on collision on the highway. Driving down the road at sixty miles per hour, a car crossed the center line and hit us head on.

I knew my back was broken. My legs were lifeless—I couldn’t move them. I had no feeling from the waist down, and the pain was excruciating.

After a couple of agonizing hours, I was finally airlifted to the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota where the doctors told me I’d broken T-12 and displaced my spinal cord by 40 degrees. I’d need surgery to fuse my spine back together, and they gave me less than 5 percent chance of ever walking again.

In other words, I was in big f$%^&# trouble.

But something else happened that night. A nurse in the emergency room came over to me and whispered in my ear, “Imagine you’re floating on a cloud.”

So I closed my eyes and imagined myself floating on a cloud… which, of course, required that my body be LIGHT. In the following days, I focused on floating and being as LIGHT as possible.

And here’s what happened: I eventually not only regained my ability to walk, but one year after I left the Mayo Clinic, played soccer (albeit poorly, lol). Today, nobody would ever guess that my spine is fused together or that I’d been in such a terrible accident.

Notice how LIGHTNESS is a very different energy from the HEAVINESS of my little heart-shaped stone.

We need different qualities at different times for different situations and circumstances.

Despite our culture’s extreme focus on achieving and producing, our best work and our best lives don’t respond well to pushing. Try as we might, it’s hard to force something to happen that’s not in alignment with Divine wisdom. (Just like it’s hard to push a boat up a flowing river.)

The apple tree doesn’t try to force its fruit to ripen when it’s not ready. It allows its natural life cycle to unfold, and its fruit is harvested when it’s time.

So, too, with humans. Healing, growth, insight, creative breakthroughs come to us when we’re aligned with the felt sense of higher wisdom.

Right now… are you in a time of building? A time of harvest? A time of exploring? Or study? A time of rest? A time to be open? A time to be gentle? A time to let go? A time to stand firm and hold your ground? A time of expansiveness?

You might be wondering what to do about the difficulty you’re having with your son. Or how to heal the digestive issues you’ve been experiencing. Or how to finally have a sense of peace and satisfaction with life. Or how to lose those ten extra pounds.

In my work, those questions are answered by the feeling qualities of metaphor.

To discover the metaphor you need right now, try this…

1. Take a moment to pause and focus on your breath. Shift your attention to your own inner knowing and imagine there’s a spacious field of very wise energy here with you. You are much more than your physical body. You’re also much more than your thinking mind.

2. Then, let a simple image spontaneously come to mind. Don’t spend any time thinking about it. We’re working with metaphor; any image will do just fine. Or you could open a magazine and choose the first image you see. Or ask a friend to give you an image. (But again, don’t allow your friend to spend time thinking about it or trying to find the ‘right’ image for you. Just have them choose a random image.)

3. Whatever simple image you come up with—cliff, tree, pencil, ant, duck, ocean—is a metaphor and it has wisdom for you.

4. Don’t create a story about the image. Instead, keep your thinking mind out of it and only notice two or three primary qualities.

5. Write down those two to three primary qualities. Remember to keep them simple: STURDY, CLEAR, EXPANSIVE, BIG, TINY, GENTLE, LIGHT, STRONG, DEFINED, FLOW, SPACIOUS, and so on. For example, your image might be a STURDY house or a TINY blueberry or an EXPANSIVE field.

6. Those two to three qualities came to you for a reason. They’re bringing the insight, healing, growth, and energetic shift that you need right now. Take a moment and write down why you think you received those particular qualities.

If you got something SMALL or TINY like a blueberry or a silver coin—what does TINY mean for you? Perhaps you’ve been ‘too big’ in the world or taken on too many responsibilities? Do you feel strung out with too many things to do? Have you been WAY too involved in your daughter’s marriage or have you been giving your friend unwanted advice? SMALL is telling you to pull back. Be SMALLER.

If you got something SOLID and STURDY—how are the qualities of SOLID and STURDY helpful for you right now? Are there situations in your life where you need to hold your boundaries? Where you need to be stronger?

If you got something BIG—are there gifts and capacities about yourself that you haven’t owned? BIG is telling you that you’re more than you think you are.

If you got something EXPANSIVE (like the sky or field or the ocean)—it’s often about acknowledging that something in your life is beyond you. Whatever-it-is is more than you can know.

—

For the past few weeks, my metaphoric image has been nurturing soup. Every time I check in with myself about what I should do next, I get an image of being soup and enjoying its sensory succulence.

I’d been in REST mode since my mother died—taking time out to grieve, find my own voice again, and gather myself back together. But with this image of soup, I’m sensing creative movement under the surface. It feels juicy, rich, and nurturing.

It also feels unhurried. The juicy richness of the soup isn’t needing to accomplish anything right now. It’s just being the richness.

Whatever primary sensory quality showed up for you is a directional pointer. It’s your very wise North star. Follow it and you’ll heal, connect to your own deep knowing, and experience miracles far beyond what you could create on your own.

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About Kim Hermanson, Ph.D.

Kim Hermanson, PhD, is a pioneering educator who has written two books on visionary space, the non-cognitive creative space that lies beyond our thinking mind. For more on her work with metaphor, check out her latest book, Deep Knowing: Entering the Realm of Non-Ordinary Intelligence, and go to her website at kimhermanson.com to download the free PDF 17 Tips for a Creative Breakthrough.

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