A Story To Help You Reprogram Your Body
As soon as we began to ask the BODY what it was feeling, she started to say that the body felt “heavy,” and she started making motions as if the weight was on her shoulders. Words are very important to DECODING. We found out that my client had been sending messages to her body, conscious and subconscious, telling it to be strong enough to carry the WEIGHT of life: emotions and heavy responsibilities she continued to have with her medical career and family discord. As you may know by now, everything is connected: mind, body, and spirit. Your body listens. Look out for the messages you are sending your body. Look out for these particular words: LIFE IS HEAVY. I HAVE SO MUCH ON MY SHOULDERS.
Should?
Should is a set-up for self-blame and a barrier to being gentle and kind with ourselves. Instead of framing our daily activities and troubles with shoulds and should nots, experiment to see what happens if you make a subtle mental shift to “something I am doing” and “something I am not doing” or “something I haven’t done yet.”
You and Your Body Go Together
Somatic therapy is a form of body-oriented therapy that explores the relationship between the body, brain and behavior. It is a process of discovery through feeling and discovering the innermost parts of ourselves. The goal of somatic therapy is to release trauma and stress which has been stored in our bodies, by shifting away from our survival instincts and toward a sense of ease in the body.
Engaging Compassion
Some clinical methodologies and modalities are designed to support privileged concepts of “normalcy” and/or “adaptation” that can have little to do with the reality of people’s lived experiences. However, a liberated approach to talk therapy does not separate the individual from the systemic and structural issues one faces. Therapeutic conversations from this approach creates multiple access points for healing by acknowledging a both/and to outside forces and personal agency.
Meaning Making and Untangling Our Core Beliefs
We all need safety, connection, meaning, autonomy, peace and more. We do what we can to meet these needs. Before we have the cognitive ability to understand situations in nuanced ways, we interpret information in ways that are developmentally appropriate for children. Without interference, we may unconsciously carry the thoughts and behavior that we learned from childhood into adulthood in more sophisticated ways.
Anxiety as an Ally
The holiday season often triggers anxiety around issues like spending time with family members who say or do hurtful things and maintaining healthy boundaries around eating or drinking. This year, many people have additional worries about contracting and/or spreading COVID-19 during their holiday celebrations, which may feel especially heightened after nearly two years of living in a pandemic. (Not to mention the other systemic concerns that we might also feel anxious about.)
Five Books to Help You Cope with Divorce
Here are five reads that will make you laugh, fill you with rage, uplift your mood, and possibly give you much-needed perspective, as you cope with divorce.
The Guilt of Mothering Solo, an Uneasy Burden
Solo Moms try to do as many things “right” as possible, but there is no such thing as perfection. When it comes to motherhood, trial and error is part of the deal.
Your Child’s Ethnicity Is Different from Yours
Multiethnic families are extremely common—they are as old as the United States itself and are widespread around the world. This recognition of diversity can mean that people are beginning to acknowledge their cultural heritage—and ethnicity, as well.
Raising Young Black Sons as a Solo Mother
Little Brother is a 10-chapter documentary film series and interactive media project that features one-on-one conversations with black boys as young as nine years old. This is great documentary for Solo Moms of young black boys, educators, and anyone interested in what young, black, male children are thinking about.