Category: healing

Do for love

~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Count the ways.

A couple months ago, I finished reading a book that’s been on my to-read list for several years. The way this usually happens for me is that I’ll have a book on my to-read list for a few years and then within days or weeks, multiple people from different spheres of my life mention to me that they’re reading it. So I take that as a sign to bump it up on my list and read it ASAP! 

That’s what I did with this book, called You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay.

Louise shares her philosophies on life and ourselves, along with ailments that can happen to us related to our energetic engagement with life via our thoughts and beliefs – usually when they’re out of alignment with who we are. 

She also shares some writing, speaking, and visualization exercises to engage with and inquire more deeply into our beliefs about ourselves. I’d like to share one of the exercises I did because it was powerful and empowering, along with the instructions below so you can do it as well, if you’d like.

Take a piece of paper and finish writing this sentence in as many ways as you can, at least 10 times, with 20 times being even more beneficial: “I love myself, therefore I . . .”

I love myself, therefore I allow myself to go to bed when I feel tired.

I love myself, therefore I stay hydrated during the day.

I love myself, therefore I regularly do things that bring me joy.

I love myself, therefore I listen to my body.

I love myself, therefore I get a massage every three weeks.

I love myself, therefore I do what I say I’m going to do – my words and actions match.

I love myself, therefore I eat healthy, well-proportioned meals.

I love myself, therefore I move my body daily in ways that feel good to me.

I love myself, therefore I nurture relationships that are important to me.

I love myself, therefore I tell myself the truth about myself and my life.

I love myself, therefore I keep commitments to myself.

I love myself, therefore I trust myself.

I love myself, therefore I spend time with friends that love and support me.

I love myself, therefore I share myself openly with others.

I love myself, therefore I know when to let go of something that doesn’t serve me, even if it’s very hard to do.

I love myself, therefore I keep going even when it feels easier to give up.

I love myself, therefore I don’t conflate anyone’s words or actions towards me with my worthiness or value.

I love myself, therefore I allow myself to disappoint others before disappointing myself.

I love myself, therefore I choose to do (the right) hard things.

I love myself, therefore I no longer abandon myself through unhealthy choices.

I love myself, therefore I tell myself so (that I love myself) multiple times a day.

The start to a well-known poem comes to mind: “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. . .” – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Your turn: Are you open to trying this exercise for yourself? Take a piece of paper and finish writing this sentence in as many ways as you can, at least 10 times, with 20 times being even more beneficial: “I love myself, therefore I . . .”

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Work with me: Want to see how self-care is transformative and can help you create the results you want in your life? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 45-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.

What’s on your mind? It can be powerful to learn from each other and our common struggles when it comes to our practice of self-care–or just being a human being. If you have something you’re struggling with and would like some perspective, share it here. Your issue may be chosen and addressed in the next post–it’ll be totally anonymous.

When you hide yourself

~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Accept yourself instead.

In the past, I wanted to portray myself in a way where others would think I had it all together and knew what I was doing. That I had everything I wanted. That I was “fine” and living a “fine” life the way I wanted to.

But I was hiding. I wasn’t allowing myself to be open and vulnerable. To be real and tell the truth. Why?

Patriarchal concepts, especially within my private equity job at the time, played into my perception of myself. I used to armor myself, metaphorically, to put forward a competent, self-sufficient, capable version of myself who wasn’t emotional or sensitive. Who was there and could do the job no matter what, pick up the pieces for others – even at the expense of myself sometimes. 

I didn’t give myself space to be authentic, partly because I didn’t know what that even meant for me. Who was I? What did I want? What brought me joy? I didn’t know the answers to those questions internally – I based what I wanted on external, societal, patriarchal values of what I “should” want or have for myself as a “successful” person. 

I didn’t allow myself to be known because there were parts of myself that seemed unacceptable to me, because I thought they were weak. And I didn’t want other people to know about those weak parts. 

It wasn’t until I started therapy after going through emergency open-heart surgery that I had a chance to look more closely at how I was living my life, by questioning beliefs I held that weren’t actually serving me, to redefine what success looked like and meant for me, to understand why I had armored and hid myself. 

Through therapy, coaching, and deep self-care practices, I learned how to accept more parts of me, to start telling myself the truth about what I needed and wanted, about who I am. 

I learned how I can share myself with others in a more authentic way, to hold space for myself and for them to show up in real ways, not in people-pleasing ways. 

I continue on this journey and I get to learn even more about myself and others along the way. I’m passionate about sharing how self-care can shift us to a place of self-acceptance and eventually to self-love. 

Your turn: What parts of yourself have you been hiding and why? How would your life be different if you learned to accept those parts of yourself? How might practicing powerful self-care help you show up differently in the world, for yourself and for others?

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Work with me: Want to see how self-care is transformative and can help you create the results you want in your life? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 45-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.

What’s on your mind? It can be powerful to learn from each other and our common struggles when it comes to our practice of self-care–or just being a human being. If you have something you’re struggling with and would like some perspective, share it here. Your issue may be chosen and addressed in the next post–it’ll be totally anonymous.

Is judging yourself working?

~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Self-compassion instead.

How does our self-compassion motivate us differently than our self-judgment?

Most of us are used to judging or punishing ourselves into action. This might sound like: 

  • “I’m so fat, I need to workout extra hard today.” 
  • “I’m such a loser, I have to figure out how to make more money.” 
  • “My life sucks, I need to find a partner.” 
  • “I’m a mess, I have to get this right.”
  • “I’m not where I want to be in life. What’s wrong with me?”

Whatever it is, we think mean things about ourselves in order to “motivate” us to do what we think we need to do in order to feel better about ourselves. “If I stop beating myself up, if I accept myself the way I am, I’ll get complacent and lazy, and never change.” 

We think we need to beat ourselves up in order to take helpful actions. We might be in a rush to get “over there” because we think that’s when we’ll feel better about ourselves. Beating ourselves up may have gotten us results in the past, but at what cost to our relationship with ourselves?

When we have a self-judging narrative, everything we do can feel punishing:

  • Instead of seeing a healthy plate of food that will nourish our body, we see a restrictive, limited diet
  • Instead of doing a workout and celebrating what our body can do, we see it as a way to punish ourselves for “not eating right”
  • Instead of staying happy in a new relationship, we find ways to prove that we’re not worthy of happiness
  • Instead of acknowledging where we ARE in life, we think something’s wrong with us for not being “farther ahead” (compared to who or what?)
  • Instead of celebrating our awareness of how we negatively talk to ourselves, we beat ourselves up for beating ourselves up!

Kindness, love, and respect for ourselves doesn’t start when we hit a certain goal of ours. 

In fact, when we do hit that goal without doing the work of self-compassion and acceptance, the reward will likely be temporary and we might still not like ourselves the way we thought we would when we finally get “over there” by hitting that goal. It’s because achieving goals doesn’t create our feelings. Our thoughts create our feelings. 

Kindness, love, and respect for ourselves can start right now, exactly as we are. 

Decide that that’s possible. 

When we have compassion and acceptance for ourselves exactly as we are at this time, we can start making the changes we want to see in our lives from a place of care, love, and patience. 

It’s about our relationship with ourselves. So that in the long-run, we are where we want to be with ourselves and in our lives, loving and accepting ourselves along the way. No matter what.

Your turn: Are you open to feeling accepting of yourself as you are? If not, what’s getting in the way? What are some of the self-judging thoughts you’re aware of? What are some self-compassionate thoughts you can have about yourself instead? What would happen today if you found some self-compassion for yourself in a situation where you usually beat yourself up?

Feeling challenged by finding more self-compassionate thoughts? Book an exploratory session here to build your self-compassion practice.

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Work with me: Want to see how self-care is transformative and can help you create the results you want in your life? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 60-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.

What’s on your mind? It can be powerful to learn from each other and our common struggles when it comes to our practice of self-care–or just being a human being. If you have something you’re struggling with and would like some perspective, share it here. Your issue may be chosen and addressed in the next post–it’ll be totally anonymous.

Your Power Sentences

~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

What drives you?

In the past, what drove me were ideas of achievement, performance, and external appearances. Basically, opportunities for external validation – I rarely regarded what I thought about myself and instead depended on what others thought about me. 

So it’s not surprising when I found out in therapy that one of the reasons why this was true was because I had an underlying thought pattern: “I’m not good enough.” 

So of course I didn’t rely on my thoughts about myself because they were always some form of, “I’m not good enough” and “I need to prove that I’m good enough.” Hence, the need for external validation from others. 

How we think about ourselves and our lives contributes to how we take care of ourselves (or don’t take care of ourselves), what we believe is possible for ourselves, and how we show up for our lives. 

We have sentences in our minds that run our life. Usually without our awareness of them.

These are called Power Sentences.

They’re powerful because they affect the results we create in our lives, usually by providing more evidence that the thought (Power Sentence) is “true.” 

When we’ve practiced thinking a thought over and over, it becomes a belief. Beliefs “feel true” even though they’re just thoughts that we’ve thought over and over.

And if our thoughts/beliefs create the results we get in our life, let’s start to become aware of these Power Sentences. 

Some examples of unintentional and unconscious Power Sentences are:

  • “I’m not good enough.” 
  • “I can never get it right.”
  • “I don’t deserve to have what I want.”
  • “It’s always so hard for me.”
  • “Things don’t work out for me.”

What might these types of thoughts prove true in our lives? 

It’s possible for us to think and practice new thoughts and beliefs – new Power Sentences – ON PURPOSE. 

Ones that SERVE our lives more than the current unintentional, unconscious thoughts and beliefs.

We can find the sentence that is running our life so we can make sure it is conscious and intentional.

The goal is to uncover our main Power Sentence, and make sure it’s what we want it to be.

Here’s an exercise to consider for finding your Power Sentence(s):

  1. 1. Who are you? What are you doing with your life? (Answer with one sentence.)
  2. 2. Are you doing it consciously? 
  3. Is this who you want to be? 
  4. Is this what you want to be doing with your life?
  5. 3. When you look at your life as a result, you can see the SENTENCE CAUSING IT.
  6. 4. What are the results you have vs. the results you want?
  7. 5. Look at the effect of your sentences.

Here are some intentional, conscious Power Sentences to try on:

  • “I am enough as I am, no matter what.”
  • “I’m willing to figure out the things that are important to me.”
  • “I’m deserving of what I want in my life.”
  • “Everything happens FOR me to grow and learn.”
  • “I embrace all challenges.”
  • “I have value to contribute.”
  • “I am an extraordinary/amazing human being.”

What might these types of thoughts prove true in our lives?

Your turn: What are you discovering about your Power Sentences? What Power Sentences do you want to start practicing on purpose? What experiences do you want to create in your life to become even more of who you want to be?

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Work with me: Want to see how self-care is transformative and can help you create the results you want in your life? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 60-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.

What’s on your mind? It can be powerful to learn from each other and our common struggles when it comes to our practice of self-care–or just being a human being. If you have something you’re struggling with and would like some perspective, share it here. Your issue may be chosen and addressed in the next post–it’ll be totally anonymous.

When it’s taking too long

~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

We’re doing the work.

When we’ve been doing the work of growing and expanding ourselves through personal growth and development, sometimes we may think, “I should know this already. I should be better at this. Why am I still reacting this way? Why is this still hard for me?”

Why, my friends? Because we are human beings with human brains.  

Just because we know the work, the tools involved, and the ways of thinking that can benefit us, doesn’t mean we no longer have human emotions and human experiences. That we no longer have to do the work. 

We learn the tools and beneficial ways of thinking in order to help us navigate our human experience on purpose, consciously and deliberately, with compassion and grace for ourselves and others. 

There isn’t a point where we get to stop doing the work—unless we choose to be stagnant and stay exactly where we are. It’s possible to do that, but also as human beings, it’s unlikely that we’ll want to choose that for ourselves.

We will always get to do the work. And that’s not a “bad” thing. It means that we’re continuing to expand ourselves and grow beyond where we currently are. That we want to be even more of who we are becoming.  

Our primitive brains evolved to want to be efficient (to do “easy” things), to avoid pain, and to seek pleasure to help us survive. 

When we’re wanting to live a fulfilled life where we’re not just surviving but thriving, we can’t always choose the easy things, we will likely be uncomfortable facing new situations and experiences, and we will delay immediate pleasure/gratification in order to attain our long-term well-being. 

So we do the work in order to overcome our primitive brains and utilize our sophisticated brains (our prefrontal cortex) to their fullest potential. 

Some thoughts for helping us continue doing the work:

  • I’m getting better at processing my emotions.
  • This is still hard for me, and that’s okay.
  • I’m learning something from this and that’s why I don’t already know better.
  • I’m reacting this way and catching myself instead of being unaware.
  • My awareness is helping me through this.
  • I can see that I’m learning and growing through this challenging experience.

The work is always here. No matter how much we know, we don’t get to escape the work. And it’s worth it to see who we become.

Your turn: Are you willing to keep doing the work to become the version of yourself that you want to be? Instead of thinking “This is taking too long,” are you willing to process and be with your feelings for as long as it takes? Are you open to remembering that you always have a choice to do the work or to not do it, and to confront the consequences depending on what you choose?

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Work with me: Want to see how self-care is transformative and can help you create the results you want in your life? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 60-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.

What’s on your mind? It can be powerful to learn from each other and our common struggles when it comes to our practice of self-care–or just being a human being. If you have something you’re struggling with and would like some perspective, share it here. Your issue may be chosen and addressed in the next post–it’ll be totally anonymous.

In a hurry to change?

~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

What are you resisting?

Sometimes we feel a sense of urgency to make a change in our lives. We think by making the change, we’ll feel better and we want to feel better NOW. This is what happens when we think our circumstances create our feelings. 

There’s nothing wrong with changing our circumstances if we can easily do that. But we usually bring our emotional state into the new circumstances as well, if we don’t spend time managing our mindset first.

For example, a client of mine recently started dating again after being off the dating apps for over 10 months. The last time she was on them, she met someone she really liked. It was long-distance, however, and the other person ended things after two months because long-distance was too hard. They didn’t have a “want match” in that aspect. And that breakup was very hard for her because she enjoyed the other person so much. 

During one of our coaching sessions together, she realized she felt a sense of urgency to meet and start dating someone new because of two things: 1) she had a belief, “If it doesn’t happen quickly, it will never happen,” and 2) she was trying to escape the feeling of hurt and sadness she still felt about the relationship ending, even after time had passed – she wasn’t over that person yet. 

In her effort to escape (resist) the feelings of hurt and sadness, she wanted to change her circumstance by meeting someone new so she would no longer feel hurt and sad. Along with recognizing that, it was also important for her to see the limiting belief she held.

So this is what we did. We pulled out the limiting belief, “If it doesn’t happen quickly, it will never happen” and looked at why that wasn’t true. Since she is being more intentional with who and what she wants, maybe it’s happening FOR her that it’s taking some time before she meets someone she really likes. In the past, things had happened somewhat quickly where she met someone she really liked, but ultimately, the relationship didn’t end up being what she wanted – the “want matches” weren’t there. 

I asked, “So how might taking ‘longer’ this time be happening FOR you?” She came up with:

  • – “I get to clarify even more who I want to be with and who I want to BE in the relationship.”
  • – “Even when it feels hard – discouraging, disappointing, rejecting – I remind myself why this is important to me and I keep showing up for myself instead of wanting to give up.”
  • – “I get to show myself love and compassion through this, which strengthens my relationship with myself.”

There are probably even more things she could find. 

The other thing we pulled out was the resistance to her feelings. When she became aware that she was resisting and trying to escape those feelings of hurt and sadness, she began to allow them to be there. 

She noticed that by allowing those feelings, the sense of urgency decreased. Because now there was less to resist or escape. She could be accepting of where she is emotionally and see that the feelings could be there and not overwhelm her. She could have compassion for herself about why she feels hurt and sad. 

She now feels more comfortable with taking her time during this process of dating and meeting people, being intentional and patient. She recognizes that even in this, she is learning and growing.

Your turn: Where in your life do you feel a sense of urgency? Can you recognize if you have a limiting belief in that area? What is the belief? Can you recognize if you’re resisting emotions in that area? What are the emotions? If you find that you feel a sense of urgency, what does having compassion for yourself look like? How might this “taking longer” or “taking too long” be happening FOR you?

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Work with me: Want to see how self-care is transformative and can help you create the results you want in your life? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 60-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.

What’s on your mind? It can be powerful to learn from each other and our common struggles when it comes to our practice of self-care–or just being a human being. If you have something you’re struggling with and would like some perspective, share it here. Your issue may be chosen and addressed in the next post–it’ll be totally anonymous.

Managing negative self-talk

~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Practices to try.

When I was first embarking on my self-care journey and figuring out what self-care meant and looked like for me, I had some help along the way.

I received ideas from my therapist, the books I read, workshops I attended, and my holistic life coaching program. I created the 3 Pillars of Transformative Self-Care. One of the three pillars is how we speak to and about ourselves. 

Many of us have a habit of negative self-talk that we might not even be aware of. Some of us are aware of it, but don’t know what to do about it. Today, I’m sharing three helpful practices around how we speak to and about ourselves, in case they’re helpful to you, where you’re at.

If you have any specific area you’re working on in your life and would like a relevant practice for that, please let me know here and I’ll share the requests and responses/practices in future emails. 

Practice #1

I used to race through my days and not pause to check-in with myself. I didn’t even know that checking-in with myself was an option, or something that could be helpful to me. But checking-in with ourselves is a powerful reminder that we matter, that what we’re feeling and needing is important.

To check-in with yourself, you can ask, “What am I feeling? When I feel this way, what do I need? What is the kindest thing I can do for myself in this moment?”  

Practice #2

Most of us are very busy seeking approval from outside of ourselves so we try to do all the things – and we exhaust ourselves or think we don’t have time for self-care because we’re so “busy” all the time. We forget – or don’t even recognize – that our own approval of ourselves matters the most. Because we can’t control what other people think about us, no matter how much we DO, or the circumstances that grant us approval. WE are the only guarantee of approval when we seek it. So why not practice accepting our own approval?

We can do this by practicing the affirmation or mantra, “I approve of myself.” Repeat multiple times daily.

Practice #3

I’ve shared this practice before, but it’s worth repeating because of its power. This is mirror work. 

  • – Stand in front of a mirror.
  • – Look yourself in the eyes.
  • – Say “thank you” to yourself.
  • – What do you feel when you do that? Is it easy? Hard? Comforting? Uncomfortable? Cringey? Why? 
  • – Practice at least twice a day until you feel comfortable saying “thank you” to yourself – where you accept your own thanks, smile, and feel good while doing it.

This practice helps us appreciate ourselves and to value what we see in the mirror when we stand in front of it.

All of these practices can support us in caring for ourselves more by helping us connect to ourselves and remember that we matter, that we are valuable, that we are worthy of self-care.

Your turn: Pick one practice to engage with this week. Next week, choose another one. Make one up for yourself, if that feels good to you. These are ways you can quiet the negative self-talk and strengthen the compassionate, supportive self-talk, so that you can start caring for yourself even more. 

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Work with me: Want to see how self-care is transformative and can help you create the results you want in your life? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 60-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.

What’s on your mind? It can be powerful to learn from each other and our common struggles when it comes to our practice of self-care–or just being a human being. If you have something you’re struggling with and would like some perspective, share it here. Your issue may be chosen and addressed in the next post–it’ll be totally anonymous.

An easy way to care for yourself

~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Even more.

One of the ways I started taking better care of myself was through thinking about my Future Self and what she would appreciate. 

It’s easy to do or not do something in the moment for reasons of instant gratification. But would your Future Self appreciate that action?

Here are some examples:

When faced with washing the dishes in my kitchen sink, would my Future Self appreciate the instant gratification of my Current Self leaving dishes in the sink for her to wash the next day? (Sometimes I DO choose to leave the dishes for the next day – on days when I know I don’t have to rush out of the house first thing in the morning. Then I DO have time to do them in the morning. But if I leave them there the night before a long day, I know I won’t be able to wash them until I get home later the next evening. And by that time, I might be too tired and there goes another day with dishes in the sink. In that case, my Future Self would appreciate me washing the dishes sooner rather than later.)

Would my Future Self appreciate me spending an hour scrolling on social media at night when I could be sleeping earlier or reading instead? I think my Future Self would appreciate some extra sleep or making progress in the book I’m reading.

Would my Future Self appreciate me skipping my morning workout routine today? What would be the consequences of that? If I’m sick or in pain, that’s a different story. My Current Self would appreciate it greatly if I skipped my morning workout routine today. My Future Self might also appreciate it, if it means that I rest and recover more quickly instead of pushing myself and prolonging the pain or sickness.

Would my Future Self appreciate me giving in to the urge to text someone who is better for me NOT to text in the moment? Probably not, because she would have to deal with the consequences of feeling anxious, waiting to hear back, receiving a message that she doesn’t want to hear, or engaging in ways that are unhealthy for her. 

Would my Future Self appreciate me eating another helping of food when I want to lose weight? No, because she’s the one who will be frustrated that her body weight isn’t changing and “nothing” is working. Even though it might meet my Current Self’s need for instant gratification, it will delay my Future Self’s desire for a more healthy weight and well-being. 

In thinking about our Future Self, what we’re doing TODAY contributes to what and who our Future Self will be, do, and have. 

Today, if we don’t overeat, we are taking care of our tomorrow Future Self who won’t feel lethargic and guilty for overeating. 

Today, if we spend an hour working on the report, we are taking care of our next-week Future Self who won’t need to scramble at the last minute to finish the report.

Today, if we decide to finally leave the toxic relationship we’re in, we are taking care of our 6-month later Future Self who is in a healthier relationship with themself (or even someone else). 

Today, if we create a monthly payment plan to pay off our debt and choose on each of the following months to stick with the plan, we are taking care of our one-year later Future Self who no longer has debt. 

We get to decide today with our actions how we are taking care of our Future Self. 

Your turn: What will you decide to do today to take care of your Future Self tomorrow? What about your Future Self in a week? In a month? In a year?

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Work with me: Want to see how self-care is transformative and can help you create the results you want in your life? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 60-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.

What’s on your mind? It can be powerful to learn from each other and our common struggles when it comes to our practice of self-care–or just being a human being. If you have something you’re struggling with and would like some perspective, share it here. Your issue may be chosen and addressed in the next post–it’ll be totally anonymous.

When you try to escape from yourself

~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

Do you know what it means to escape yourself? We may avoid ourselves or escape from ourselves for different reasons, which I’ll talk about in a minute. 

Forms of escape or avoidance that might be familiar to you are overeating, overdrinking, overspending, over-Instagraming, over-Netflixing, overworking, over-cleaning, over-exercising, or eating edibles. 

It could be ANYTHING, if we’re using that thing/action to prevent ourselves from being present to feeling an emotion.

I call this type of escape “buffering.” What is buffering?

We buffer to avoid feeling emotional pain or uncomfortable emotions. When we buffer, we use external things to change how we feel internally. This means engaging in an action to put a buffer between us and a feeling we don’t want to feel. 

We might feel like we’re taking care of ourselves by engaging in some of these actions. Sometimes we are. And sometimes, these things become false pleasures that have a net-negative outcome: when we overeat, we gain weight. When we overdrink, we end up with hangovers and half of the next day is ruined. When we overspend, we go into debt or don’t meet our savings goals. When we eat edibles, we are less present for our lives and those around us.

If buffering is what we do to avoid pain/discomfort, it makes sense that when we stop buffering, we’ll feel pain/discomfort. But most of us don’t understand this, which makes it almost impossible to stop buffering or escaping ourselves.

We have to be willing to feel uncomfortable in order to move past our buffers.

An analogy for this is like stepping into a house and turning on the lights and the house is a mess. The obvious and easiest answer is to turn the lights back off (to buffer) so the mess will “go away.” But the mess doesn’t go away – you just can’t see it now because the lights are off.

It’s similar with emotions. Avoiding an emotion doesn’t make the emotion go away – it just helps us not to see or feel it. We pretend it isn’t there, but it IS there, and it’s there for a reason.

And this is part of the reason WHY we buffer sometimes – to NOT find out what that reason is. 

Buffering is a way to tolerate our lives when we know there’s some misalignment occurring. 

We may be unhappy at our job, but we need to keep the job in order to support our family. So we buffer by overdrinking wine every night or impulse buying on Amazon or eating edibles.

Or we might be in a relationship that’s not working for us, but instead of having an uncomfortable conversation or making a scary, difficult decision, we stay in the relationship and buffer instead.

Or we don’t like the overall trajectory of our lives but don’t know what to do, so we buffer – which is easy – instead of doing the harder work of looking within, seeking professional help, or making tough decisions to help change our lives. 

When we stop buffering, we’ll likely experience temporary pain. And the pain isn’t caused by the lack of buffering. What we need to do is stop buffering ourselves long enough to find the real cause of the pain. 

It might mean taking a closer look at ourselves and our lives, our decisions and choices up to this point, and asking ourselves what we really need and how we truly want to take care of ourselves and our lives.

Your turn: What feelings have you been avoiding? What are the false pleasures you’ve been engaging in? In what way would your life be different if you didn’t have these false pleasures? Are you ready to stop buffering and willing to feel some discomfort instead, in order to move towards true knowing and well-being for yourself?

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Work with me: Want to see how self-care is transformative and can help you create the results you want in your life? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 60-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.

What’s on your mind? It can be powerful to learn from each other and our common struggles when it comes to our practice of self-care–or just being a human being. If you have something you’re struggling with and would like some perspective, share it here. Your issue may be chosen and addressed in the next post–it’ll be totally anonymous.

Is it selfish?

~ The Healing Modalities ~ Leave a comment

You get to decide.

Over the weekend, I attended the Kidpower International 35 year anniversary conference in Healdsburg, California. I’ve been part of Kidpower since 2002 and for this conference, people in the Kidpower community gathered from many places around the world, including Argentina, Ecuador, Guatemala, Mexico, New Zealand, Nepal, Vietnam, Pakistan, Montreal, Germany, Sweden, Russia, and Iran, and from various places within the U.S. We gathered together to learn, connect, and celebrate. I felt a strong sense of community and shared values.

At the conference, I made a presentation about Transformative Self-Care and received a question that I want to write about today: “What is the difference between self-care and being selfish?” 

This is an important question – and it might also contribute to being an obstacle for some of us to engage in our own self-care practice. If we see self-care as selfish and we don’t want to view ourselves as “selfish,” then the cognitive dissonance will get in the way. 

One conference participant shared a new concept: self-fullness vs. selfishness. I appreciated that idea! It’s like being mindful about ourselves by being self-full of what we need to for ourselves.

A question came to me that felt very powerful as well: 

Is it selfish to take care of ourselves if doing so helps us continue contributing to and taking care of others? 

When put that way, I don’t see the selfishness. I see someone who is prioritizing themselves so that they can continue to actively contribute to others and to the world. 

When we are depleted and worn down, contributing to others can feel like a burden. But when we are taken care of and filled up by our own efforts to care for ourselves, contributing to others can feel more joyful and desirable. 

Your turn: You get to decide – is it selfish to take care of yourself so that you can continue taking care of others and contributing in ways that feel good to you? 

Subscribe if you want to receive this content directly in your inbox.

Work with me: Want to see how self-care is transformative and can help you create the results you want in your life? I can show you how. I offer first-time seekers a complimentary 60-minute exploratory session. Sign up here.

What’s on your mind? It can be powerful to learn from each other and our common struggles when it comes to our practice of self-care–or just being a human being. If you have something you’re struggling with and would like some perspective, share it here. Your issue may be chosen and addressed in the next post–it’ll be totally anonymous.