Articles by Topic

• Acceptance • Body • Boundaries, Full Self • Emotions • Find Support • Hard Times, Abuse • Healing Tools • Relating • Self-Trust • Survival Tools • Trauma Effects, PTSD • Wider Narratives •

Acceptance
- Achieve Approval
  This person, this being, is filled with radiant love, approval, and pleasure at your very existence.
- Unhook from Projection
  When we stop fighting our shadows, we see ourselves and the rest of the world.
- The Tyranny of Normal
  Each body is normal in relation to itself, despite the myths we persist in believing against all evidence.
- Integration: Live into Both/And
  There is deep healing when we invite a younger part closer and say, "You matter. Your experience matters. Your truth matters."
- The Heartbreak of “Why?”
  Other people's cruelty is not our fault.
- Take a Break from Healing
  You do not have to be perfect to be treated with respect.
- Worthy of Protection
  We all deserve protection for our needy, vulnerable places as well as recognition of our strengths.
- When I Started
  I stand with fellow victims and survivors and tell you that you do not need fixing.
- Respect Your Reservoir of Pain
  Most of us carry old pain from the twists and turns our lives have taken.
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Body
- Befriend Your Pain
  To reduce suffering, relate to pain as a friend bearing a message rather than an enemy to be feared.
- Claim Your Space, Breathe into Your Back
  Shallow chest breathing takes up as little space as possible. Deeper belly breathing pushes out into the world. Back breathing claims the space that is already yours.
- Change the Rules, Inhabit Your Pelvis
  Bring awareness to the bony structure of your pelvis.
- How to Irritate Your Nervous System
  Seeking irritation might be easier and more informative than seeking calm.
- Let Your Jaw Speak
  Physical movement in your avenue of expression creates sound. Immobility is silent.
- Sense Your Spine’s Support
  When we trust our structure, our whole body relaxes, expands, and breathes more easily.
- Arms Relate to the World
  Our arms are structured to fluidly express our physical boundaries.
- Legs Dance, Kick, Run
  Our legs are on our sides, like our arms, and start above the hip crease.
- Explore Uncurled Posture
  The sensation might be, "Oh, I didn't realize I was holding there!" as a shoulder drops, or "I have more room than I thought," as a hip moves back.
- Humans Allowed Full Body
  Claim your inner terrain for yourself - it is your birthright.
- Protect Your Irritated Nervous System
  When the nervous system is chronically irritated, it transmits sensations more strongly and is more likely to interpret strong sensations as pain.
- Find Calm: A Polyvagal Primer
  Stephen Porges' Polyvagal Theory explains our nervous system and helps us make sense of our behavior.
- Find Calm: Practice Rest and Regulation
  Even if we missed out on learning how to be calm as babies, it is not too late for our nervous systems to learn about rest and regulation as adults.
- Look into the Present
  As we look at the world with more relaxation and clarity, we see more of the beauty and safety available to us.
- The Push/Pull of Touch
  When the need for touch has been met well enough, with kindness and safety, we accept the ongoing need as naturally as we accept the need to breathe.
- Get to Know Your Guts
  Reconnect with your belly through kind touch and specific knowledge about the organs inside.
- Let Go for More Sound
  As we restore our ease of movement, we restore our ability to be our complete selves out loud.
- Self-Care for Sticky Lungs
  With your hand as an anchor, your relaxed breathing provides movement to gradually stretch and release adhesions.
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Boundaries, Full Self
- Choose Your Traditions
  Notice your expectations and desires around the winter holidays.
- Who Owns That Anger?
  While anger can do damage when held in or unleashed on another, it can also lead to clarity and strength when handled with care.
- Haunted by Shame? Change Your Committee!
  Imagine living your life with a fully supportive, encouraging, and approving internal committee.
- Inner Child Lost -n- Found
  If you often find yourself saying "I've tried everything!" or "Don't leave me!" or "See me!", visit the Inner Child Lost -n- Found for relief.
- Say Yes to Your Boundaries
  Boundaries are already part of us, a flexible container for our sensations, emotions, and preferences, separating "me" from "not-me".
- Just-Right Visibility
  Explore your skills at both hiding and shining.
- Healthy Entitlement: Discern Your Domain
  We are entitled to complete autonomy over the insides and surfaces of our bodies.
- Cherish Your Limits
  Paying attention to our limits helps us compassionately care for ourselves.
- The Perils of Nice
  When we do not constrain ourselves to be nice, we can step into the power of showing up as our authentic selves kindly and creatively.
- Embody Hunger, Embody Fullness
  To connect more directly with our bodies just as they are right now, we can bring more awareness to eating, hunger, and fullness.
- Your Body Is Your Ally
  When you tend to your body with generous care, you practice feeling better and receiving kindness right now.
- Balance for Your Inner Guardian
  As your Inner Guardian becomes more integrated into the present, you can offer a more balanced, skillful response to present-time threats.
- In Search of Self-Confidence
  Treat yourself as if you deserve to exist.
- Inhabit Your Surface
  Experiment with working less hard for a while.
- Within Reach of Your Comfort Zone
  When we have access to a secure home base, we can explore and take risks more freely.
- Care for Hidden Ruptures
  Imagine if we collectively made it a high priority to help children and adults heal from attachment wounds.
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Emotions
- Counter the Feelings Police
  Emotions are meant to move. Giving them more space allows them to flow and change, peak and ebb.
- Sit with Disappointment
  When we can sit with disappointment, we find our own balance between acceptance and efforts toward change.
- Depression: Natural Response to Trauma
  You are not broken. Your responses make sense. As you find ways to sit with inner terror and misery and loneliness for as long as they are there, they will gradually shift and make room for new feelings.
- Resonate With Loneliness
  Every time we turn toward our own experience with warmth, we strengthen our Inner Nurturer.
- Make Room for Grief
  Grief is as individual and as universal as a fingerprint.
- Lift the Anger Lid With Care
  Anger can fuel change toward more kindness, more truth, more respect, and more justice.
- Anchor Terror in Time
  Terror moves us to act in the present, shows us where kind attention is needed to heal our past, and directs us to prepare for the future.
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Find Support
- Kuan Yin, Goddess of Compassion
  My healing practice is dedicated to Kuan Yin. All those who have suffered trauma need compassion both from within and from others.
- Add Peace to Your Life
  How to make peace a priority now, in the midst of struggle.
- Disclose Pain, Find Support
  Describe the support you want, and increase the odds of receiving it.
- A Boundary-Nourishing Healer Search
  Finding providers of caring touch and coming to trust them can be a journey in itself.
- 100 Percent On Your Own Side
  Your Inner Nurturer knows you're doing it right.
- Deepen Your Roots, Stretch Your Branches
  Grow into a shape defined by your history and desires, like a tree becoming more intricately itself every year.
- First-Aid for Desperate Moments
  These phrases provide first-aid assistance when you need to feel better right now.
- Add Ease to Anniversaries
  When we can be a kind witness for our hurting selves, we can disentangle painful feelings from the time of year that brings them up.
- When Help Means Danger
  When the first people to care for us also hurt us, of course it will be difficult to manage relationships with practitioners.
- When Help Means Rescue
  Helpers remove obstacles and add nourishment and support. They help us become more ourselves, rather than transforming us into someone else.
- Elements of Refuge
  Healing practitioners can provide a calm refuge for overwhelmed survivors by offering a stable container around logistics, emotions, and the relationship.
- How to Leave Your Practitioner
  "Can we talk about what completing treatment and stopping would look like?"
- Celebrate Small Steps
  Each of us can take time to soak up relief, hope, and ease when they arise.
- Solid Support for Change
  When we have more inner and outer resources, it is easier to take risks and try something new.
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Hard Times, Abuse
- Emotional Abuse: You Deserve Better
  Emotional abuse can be as obvious as name-calling and raging, or it can be so subtle you spend days wondering why you feel so bad.
- Grieve Neglectful Mothering
  Many clients have brought in their pain over neglectful or abusive mothering. May you have many reparative experiences!
- Not Again! Tame Your Fiercest Patterns
  When your recurring pattern has you in its claws, hold still and move in.
- Demand Respect, Not Victim-Blaming
  You are already enough. No one deserves abuse for any reason.
- Step Away from Double Binds
  How to identify and respond effectively to contradictory demands.
- “Trust Me!” and Other Red Flags
  When you pay attention to red flags, you claim your power to choose, help your self-trust heal, and make room in your life for people who treat you with respect.
- Spiritual Abuse: Take Back Your Faith
  To heal from spiritual abuse, look inside for what you know for sure.
- Stuck in a Labyrinth
  Sometimes there is no direct path to a goal, and turning away can help you move forward in unexpected ways.
- Surrender Without Shame
  Your painfully remembered surrender was a successful strategy to survive into this present moment.
- Truth Across Lines of Authority
  We live in a web of privilege and marginalization that affects how we express boundaries.
- Interrupt Bullying
  Change in a victim cannot fix a perpetrator's problem. We all have vulnerabilities, and we deserve to be treated with kindness around them.
- Deflect the Tone Argument
  There is no tone calm enough to express uncomfortable truths to someone with the power to refuse to hear.
- Decipher the Silent Treatment
  In the face of non-response, we can choose to inquire, wait, or write off the interaction.
- The Betrayal of Not Being Heard
  We all deserve to have our distress heard and heeded.
- The Puzzle Box of Shame
  Shame heals in many small steps.
- Withstand Ongoing Trauma
  As you move through difficult, triggering events in the present, bring along all the healing tools you have learned over time.
- How to Resist Enough
  Resisting oppression can be affirmative, creative, connected, nourishing.
- Mend What You Can Reach
  When we take small actions within our reach, we build sustainability, community, and hope.
- Agency in a Time of Pandemic
  Recognize the quiet heroism of staying home.
- Adapt to New Risks
  Allow yourself to be a beginner at handling this pandemic.
- Wear a Mask to Belong
  Protect the community you already belong with.
- Rock the Boat About Racism
  White supremacy is a catastrophe for everyone. Gently gather your courage, step forward, and talk about racism.
- Within Sight of Relief, Pause
  Acknowledge losses and longings, and give yourself time to rest and recover.
- A Harvest of Understanding
  With kind eyes, look back at this pandemic year.
- Talk About Abusers
  Most people are complex mixtures of good and bad intentions, benign and harmful behaviors.
- Restore Your Kind Attention
  Denial buys time to gather resources and absorb information more gradually.
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Healing Tools
- Meditation: Safe Space for Noticing
  Meditation is simpler and more welcoming than you might think.
- The Joy of Maintenance
  Enjoy maintenance tasks as affirmations of presence.
- Create: Walk into Fog
  When you create, you are making your way across an unknown foggy landscape one decision at a time.
- Allow Self-Forgiveness
  Self-forgiveness is giving up all hope of being a different person.
- Decision-Free Zone
  Listen for what is true for you with a clear boundary that action is off the table.
- Navigate Change: Mind the Gap
  When we move mindfully through small and large gaps, we create space in our lives for healing.
- The Power of Gentle
  We instinctively approach a frightened animal with slow, gentle movements and a soft voice. Traumatized humans need the same gentle approach.
- All Done! Tools for Rapid Change
  When we allow all our conflicting feelings to be present, drop what isn't ours, and imagine the problem is already solved, we can emerge into new terrain.
- Choose an Easier Road
  The first step toward an easier road might be permission to make choices that lessen pain.
- Check In With Your Chakras
  The chakra system helps us focus on one kind of healing at a time, and notice what is going well in addition to what is difficult.
- Weave Your Body Whole
  Kabbalah helps us weave the bits of ourselves back together.
- Heal Around the Edges
  Trauma heals at the borders between comfortable and uncomfortable.
- Presence After Trauma: Introduction
  Becoming present is an ongoing exploration of willingness to accept what is, and willingness to allow it to change.
- Find Your Way to Rest
  Rest because it nourishes you and adds enjoyment to your life.
- Associate Yourself with Nature
  Contact with nature can steady your nervous system and counter a sense of isolation and unreality.
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Relating
- Compassion for the Drama Triangle
  The Drama Triangle model, applied with compassion, can help you change recurring conflicts.
- Apologies: Good, Bad, and Abusive
  Carefully crafted apologies can open the door to healing, or, with different intent, open the door to continued abuse.
- Loving Anger
  Listen inside, explore options, and take self-protective action with empathy for others.
- Reasons to Stay
  If you know someone in an abusive situation, express your trust in their essential strength and capacity to find their way.
- Sensitivity Survival Tips
  Sensitivities challenge us to assert our body's needs rather than go along with the crowd.
- Listen to Defensiveness
  When we acknowledge defensiveness, we can open into curiosity and maintain connections with people around us.
- Enjoy Enthusiastic Consent
  Consent is an unforced moment-to-moment agreement to participate in a specific activity.
- Patience with Long Endings
  When we sit patiently with uncertainty, we make room for a new pattern to emerge.
- The Sacred Work of Showing Up
  Emotional labor is the detail work of caring, of noticing, of paying attention.
- Seek Nourishing Feedback
  We thrive on positive feedback, with the occasional bit of corrective negative feedback thrown in.
- The Right Distance from Family
  Whether we connect with our parents every day, once a year, or not at all, we can reduce the internal charge we carry toward them.
- Grow Away from Enmeshment
  As you repair your boundaries and sense of self, rather than feeling woven together with someone else, you will gradually feel more solid in yourself.
- Support a Friend in Crisis
  "I'm here to listen."
- Careful Conflict
  Learning to manage conflict with care is a lifetime project for each of us.
- Intervene for a Better World
  As the nervous system heals over time, our window of tolerance widens for minor infractions, and we can intervene more calmly and skillfully for larger issues.
- Kindness, Not Contempt
  In this time of isolation, simply acknowledging someone with kind eyes is a gift.
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Self-Trust
- Sensitivities: Your Self-Care Guide
  Sensitivities can be a valuable guide for moving toward your ideal environment.
- Invite Your Longing to Tea
  What can you learn from sitting with longing rather than immediately fulfilling or suppressing it?
- Needs Amnesty Day
  Tired of figuring out which needs are allowed? Declare a Needs Amnesty Day and welcome them all.
- Many Voices, All Valid
  Greet all parts of yourself with compassion to feel the validation you seek.
- Connect with Your Complex Voice
  Humming can heal the isolation of trauma.
- Permission to Stop Beating Yourself Up
  Here is your Official Permission to believe you are good enough for self-compassion right now.
- Repair Your Reality After Gaslighting
  Gaslighting teaches you to doubt your perceptions of reality. To repair your self-trust, tune in to your internal signals with interested curiosity.
- Discover Your Core Commitments
  What do you reach toward no matter how many obstacles stand in your way?
- Heritage of Resilience
  Resilience repeats across generations as survivors teach their strengths through stories and behavior.
- Stand in Your Story
  It is healthy to value your own viewpoint, no matter how personal and emotional.
- Serenity Through Your Locus of Control
  One of the central tasks of healing is to reassign fault and power.
- Trust Yourself Despite Everyday Gaslighting
  Imagine a kind friend saying, "I believe you. It’s not you. You’re doing all the right things."
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Survival Tools
- The Gift of Resistance
  Resistance carries the gift of information from our deeper selves.
- Calm Your Inner Critic
  You may have already noticed that arguing with your Inner Critic only leads to louder criticism, possibly about how self-critical you are.
- Tell a Story about Denial
  The positive aspects of denial, and a writing exercise to reduce some of its frustrations.
- Behind the Curtain of Obsessive Thoughts
  How to quiet those painful repeating trains of thought and see what is behind them.
- Gain Awareness of Dissociation
  We all dissociate or lose contact with our bodies at times. How to notice and what to do about it.
- Addiction as Emotion Management
  As you learn new techniques to manage your emotions, you will no longer need to avoid emotional and physical pain through addiction.
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Trauma Effects, PTSD
- Accept Suicidal Feelings
  Links between trauma and suicidal feelings and some practical suggestions for yourself or someone who confides in you.
- Ups and Downs of Healing from Trauma
  What to expect during the process of healing from trauma and some tips to get through the hard parts.
- Flashbacks: Experience Distress in Safety
  Flashbacks help you integrate traumatic memories. Learn how to recognize and respond to them as part of your healing.
- Anxiety: Your Relaxation Coach
  Interrupt anxiety with acceptance and understand its role in your body.
- Remember at Your Own Pace
  Trauma is overwhelming, but healing doesn't have to be.
- Frozen! Thaw from Surrender
  When you give yourself full permission to feel helpless and frozen, it paradoxically creates space for healing and effective action.
- Safety in Your Bones
  Safety is an internal experience, a skill to be learned and a choice to be made.
- Effects of Sexual Assault
  Survivors face denial, hostility, and pressure to consider themselves less important than the perpetrator.
- Relax For Your Life
  Relaxation is surrender, not to someone else, but to your present truth.
- Exit Emergency Mode
  What if this problem is already solved?
- Rest at Sleep’s Threshold
  Whether you sleep or not, night can be a time for rest, contemplation, and listening inside.
- Triggered! Now What?
  Suddenly we are defiantly thirteen, or playfully four, or speechlessly afraid when we would prefer to be competent adults.
- Name Memories Without Words
  Flashbacks to preverbal memories are intense, all-consuming, boundaryless.
- Not Alone with Your ACEs
  A large majority of people have had Adverse Childhood Experiences, which directly affect our health.
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Wider Narratives
- Prefer Narratives with Hope
  Try a new narrative: “My perceptions and responses make sense. I am intrinsically good. I am doing my best with the resources and knowledge I have.”
- Relieve Pressure: Replace Should with Could
  "Should" makes us look over our shoulder to see if we are good enough yet. "Could" invites us to look inside instead.
- Offer a Collaborative Story
  When we invite people to be on the same side with collaborative stories, we open the door to more connection in our lives.
- Practice Kind Language
  When we practice non-ableist language, it gives us more room to be imperfect humans, internally and externally.
- Consider Additional Truths
  The more we sense into our present environment and the people around us with caring, the less we impose our world view on others.
- Good Enough for Mistakes
  We can use our skills and resources to recover from mistakes and integrate them into the flow of life.
- Loosen Inner Deadlock
  Inclusive solutions emerge from listening deeply to all our needs and fears.
- The “Good Person” Badge
  Thanks to each of you for working so hard to be a good person.
- Prefer Narratives with Hope, Updated
  Try a new narrative: “My perceptions and responses make sense. I am intrinsically good. I am doing my best with the resources and knowledge I have.”
- Embodying Hope: Introduction
  We embody hope when we keep moving forward, one stubborn step after another, like walking through steady rain.
- Nestle Into Uncertainty
  When we allow uncertainty and hold our assumptions more lightly, we make room for change and hope.
- Accessible for This Starfish
  When one person feels more welcome and safe, they can take more action and inspire others to action.
- Let Life Flow Forward
  Inhabit the moving present rather than the frozen past.
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Acceptance

Body

Boundaries, Full Self

Emotions

Find Support

Hard Times, Abuse

Healing Tools

Relating

Self-Trust

Survival Tools

Trauma Effects, PTSD

Wider Narratives

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