practices for maintaining your emotional self care
skill weekly
How NOT Feeling Sad can Make you Depressed
The skillful response to sadness is to honor it: slowing down, validating your feelings, and allowing the mourning to take place. This allows the natural and justified emotion to do its job; to inform you and communicate to others that there is a need. After which it can pass naturally, so you may return to your other life pursuits.
Relationship Skills: Nurturing Your Support System in Close Quarters
There’s an old joke that asks, ‘How are house guests and fish alike?” (wait a beat)… “Both go bad after three days.” This relationship effectiveness skill will help prevent your close relationships from going stale during the quarantine. Old jokes stick around,...
Why Covid Quarantine May Reveal Your True Nature
We all like to think of ourselves as a certain kind of person: Generous, kind, determined, smart, whatever. But are our self-concepts accurate? And more importantly, do they continue to serve us, when life conditions change dramatically? We may just find out during these uniquely stressful times of Covid quarantine.
Mindfulness Skills in Times of Uncertainty
As we all cope with the uncertainty of the coming months, mindfulness skills can help us to ride through the difficult emotions, step back from scary thoughts, and increase self-control in our behavior. These are the evidence-based mindfulness skills I teach to help build up distress tolerance and emotional mastery.
Finding Your Tribe for Back to School
It’s back to school season again! Time to put away the flip-flops and head over to Staples! You can just feel the cringe come on as you think about it, huh? Every year at this time, my phone starts ringing and the appointment requests come flooding in. And every year...
4 Steps to Stepping Back from a Holiday Family Freak-out
The holidays can bring out the best and worst in us. When we try to over control situations and our feelings, things can go terribly wrong.
That Thing You Do: The Chronic Complainer – Episode 3
OMG seriously! This sucks! I can’t believe I have to do this. Complaining, we all do it sometimes. We vent, describe, assert, and tell stories of dissatisfaction. Of course we do! Like all emotional habit patterns, we get a juicy satisfaction from the act of venting...
That Thing You Do: The Workaholic – Episode 2
“Okay! What’s next” was the thought that constantly ran through Martha’s head, like a metronome keeping her in beat to her non-stop lifestyle. Anytime there was a beat, a pause, a silence – “What’s next?! – egged her on. Martha was indeed a work-a-holic! Like all...
That Thing You Do: Perfectionism – Episode 1
We all know people who we wish could just see, and own, their stuff. You know, that thing they do, over and over again, which leads to outcomes they say they don’t want: The wrong guy, the dead-end job, unequal friendships, or just lack of progress. But do you know...
That Thing You Do! New Skill Weekly Series Launch
We all have a thing. You know - a familiar way we react when we get emotionally triggered. Some of us are aware that we have a tendency to react in certain ways to certain situations. Maybe a close friend has brought this to your awareness. Or maybe you’re a seeker...
When to Practice Acceptance: 4 Questions to Ask Yourself
Take 60 seconds to answer to each of these questions – to know if a situation calls for acceptance, or change.
Are You Approach Or Avoidance Motivated? A Mini Quiz
What gets you moving? When you have a goal or need a change, what’s top of mind; the reward – or the avoidance of a loss? Today’s SKILL WEEKLY talks about the pros and cons of each, and has a mini-quiz about drives your motivation, and how to...