Life's too short

How many times have you obsessed over how to say just the right thing in just the right way so as not to offend someone you care about? Or perhaps tried to say something in a way that would not upset or offend your boss or coworker? Knowing what you need and saying it without sounding defensive or aggressive isn’t always easy. But life’s too short to be subtle! Leaving your fate to chance is like taking the long way around with the possibility that you may never arrive. It’s never too late to set new goals and go after your heart’s desire.

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therapeutic relationship

Wow. What matters most in therapy? There are so many schools of thought on that question it boggles the brain. Between the problem approach and the list of disorders published in the DSM-V (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: Fifth Edition), identifying what makes therapy successful has about as many answers as there are economists predicting the stock market. When I scroll through other therapists’ listings on Psychology Today to see how many different disorders they treat, I start feeling a little queasy. Should I be treating all those? Listing all those specialties? Does that matter? Or should I maybe sound more warm and fuzzy like many sites do? Should I declare that my undying passion is to help others?
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gratitude

Appreciate the boring, the routine, the mundane, the ubiquitous features of your daily life. If they were removed, you would grieve for the normalcy lost. This is in fact a thread in some of the testimonies recorded by Holocaust survivors in the memory foundation created by Stephen Spielberg as a part of living history. His USC Shoah Foundation has filmed about 52,000 two-hour eyewitness accounts in 34 languages and in 58 countries. What most struck me in some of the recordings is their gratitude for mundanity, the “everydayness” of the lives that were stolen from them. This Thanksgiving I see these testimonies as urging us to appreciate what we have.

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negativity

Gratitude schmatitude. Bah humbug. And many other similar sentiments would express how I feel about the recent election shenanigans that were so filled with negativity. I had on my negative lens. But instead of dwelling with that experience, I chose to immerse myself in Cucalorus. Cuca-what you say?

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workaholism

When you are an entrepreneur, it is easy to get consumed by what I call the anxious underbelly of small business ownership. When you find that you cannot shut off the valve of workaholism, and you cannot stop obsessing about the never ending to-do list, it is time to reassess. Read more

shame triggers for women

When I think about shame triggers and how they bloom, I am immediately taken back to a story of myself in the sixth grade. This was when elementary school went from 1st-6th grade; formal kindergarten was not yet in existence.
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anger, anger management, assertiveness, counseling, shame, shame triggers, therapy

Anger management for women is often bound up in shame. The Western culture in which we live places women in a double bind when they speak up, especially at work, sometimes labeling them angry, loud or pushy. Read more

anger codependency anxiety

Or is your anger somewhere on this continuum? I want to challenge the belief that anger is harmful. Read more

what every body says

I just finished an interesting book about reading body language written by Joe Navarro, an ex-FBI agent:

What Every Body Is Saying, 2008, Harper by Joe Navarro and Marvin Karlins, PhD

What interested me the most was the author’s scientific comparisons and parallels to the limbic system as the primary generator of physical behaviors by our bodies that are largely unconscious.

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categories

While I was standing on the corner of the busiest intersection in Wilmington protesting HB2, a recently passed law in NC which discriminates against the LGBTQ population and removes the right of local municipalities to set their own minimum wage and anti-discrimination ordinances, I began to start categorizing those that passed by in their cars. This is a common activity of our brains used to make meaning in our lives; we cannot help but do it.

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