Category: Uncategorized

Self Practice Supports Us!

I need space to be, to just be, where I am not receiving messages from others telling me that I’m wrong about what I feel, or wrong about what I need, or wrong about what I know about myself, or just generally wrong.

It is difficult enough to clear the internal messages on that channel, without reinforcement of those destructive messages from those around us.

It is ok to deliberately look for those safe spaces and to deliberately avoid places and people who give us invalidating messages.

This is not about denying my/our need for continued insight, growth and improvement. It’s about creating the space that makes those improvements possible.

Self Practice Supports Us!

Underneath the layers of survival, the cry of Developmental Trauma in surviving adults may be this:

 “Please sit with me, care for me and be with me. I’m hurting and in need. It’s been so painful and unsafe that I haven’t even been able to feel and remember how bad it was.”

It’s tricky. 

Each of us needs the other to be profoundly gentle and understanding, while we ourselves are often clumsy or lost.

So we fall down a lot but keep choosing again to bring tenderness and forgiveness to ourselves and the people in our lives.

Self Practice Supports Us!

For deep change, we require gentleness and compassion from ourselves and others.

Without gentleness and compassion, we evoke change through force, threats, shame, fear, bribery or manipulation. Any of these can work, but these partially unconscious approaches to change also bring instability and stress. 

However we have been motivating ourselves till now, we want to introduce or increase our dosages of gentleness and compassion for ourselves and others.

Self Practice Supports Us!

It feels like everything is wrong, but it’s just not true. 

Sure, there are lots of challenges and problems in me, 

in my life and in the world around me.

But there is also a lot that is good.

I love and I am loved.

I act in ways that are helpful as do the people around me.

Learning to disbelieve this feeling that “Everything is wrong!” will actually help me to better address the things that need to be changed.

It feels like everything is wrong and I know it is not true.

There is much that is good.

I soften into knowing there is much that is good.

I soften, and that which is good embraces me.

Hello all my beloveds!!

Whew, I was afraid to look but I did anyway and it’s been four months since my last newsletter.

This newsletter is a health update and a health-related PSA (public service announcement) that may be relevant for some of my audience.

I have been experiencing a bout of really over the top fatigue, worse than my usual baseline of moderate fatigue (which is why you have not heard from me). There are a range of root causes for sure, but I discovered one key culprit and that made a huge difference. I stopped taking my multi-vitamin and I felt relief within just a day or so.

Proof of Life

Why would a multi-vitamin cause crippling fatigue? Because this one (and it turns out many other multivitamins and many other supplements) includes an ingredient called Alpha-Lipoic Acic (ALA).

What is ALA and why would that cause crippling fatigue?

ALA is a powerful antioxidant, used for treating diabetic neuropathy and for general anti-oxidation. That’s good, right? For a lot of people, it’s great.

But ALA is also a mercury chelator. What does that mean? It means that for someone who has mercury in their body, ALA will find the mercury, grab hold of it, and carry it away from wherever it was stashed.

Continue reading “PSA: Mercury (not retrograde! – worse) 😓 Ackk!”

Self Practice Supports Us!

With a neutral and curious stance, I scan my environment with my eyes, ears, sense of smell, and spidey-sense.

I invite my body to actively notice the lack of any immediate threat, and to soften.

I breathe, I feel gravity pulling me down and I feel the bed or chair holding me up.

I pause and rest here, tracking my breath and noticing what neutral feels like, gently nudging away (best I can) the impulse to engage with alarm. 

Breath. Support. Neutral. Rest.

Self Practice Supports Us!

I am noticing discomfort. I don’t feel good.

The emotion in the discomfort seems to be (feeling).

I make space for the feeling of (feeling) AND I connect with my calm strength at my core.

I direct my focus of attention to my calm strength.

I feel the support of my ancestors at my back.

I don’t need for the (feeling) to go away

(though that would be nice).

I connect to the quiet, even as I allow the feeling of (feeling) to just be.

Self Practice Supports Us!

There is something in my life that bothers me, hurts me, or destabilizes me when I encounter it. I will call it my trigger situation. [Many of us have several big ones.]

I soften and open to the understanding that the emotional pain I feel in my trigger situation is mostly not about my trigger situation and not about present time.

I recognize that I have resources and support that I did not have in the past.

Connected to my heart, my roots, my belly, and my third eye,

I gently turn and look at my trigger situation straight on, inviting my body to recognize that I can feel this pain and remain standing.

I breathe and know that I will be ok.

Whatever the helplessness, terror, overwhelm, pain, rage, grief or loneliness, I can hold the feelings because I know that they are not telling me the truth about me and my life, even though they always seem to have a compelling argument.

Self Practice Supports Us!

I soften and open to the experience
of the trees greeting me,
welcoming me, smiling at me
and being happy that I am here.

I soften and open to the experience
of greeting the trees,
welcoming them, smiling at them
and being happy that they are here.
And the flowers and the lightposts and the automobiles and the humans.

Self Practice Supports Us!
I feel how
I don’t know who I am
I don’t know how
I am meant to fit in
I invite myself to be with this gently,
without stress or panic,
in a way that is neutral and curious.
There is freedom and possibility here.