Emotional Bill of Rights- Here are some personal rights that I am trying to remind myself of on a daily basis. These are rights that we all have. I am writing them in the first person so I can remind myself. You're welcome to read them outloud and see if they resonate with you. These … Continue reading An Emotional Bill of Rights
Category: Uncategorized
Emotional Authenticity
This post is the start of something new here on the blog. It’s the start of expressing myself and my feelings as I truly am. It’s the beginning of not hiding parts of myself because of how I perceive others will respond to them. Right now as I type this I am feeling a sense … Continue reading Emotional Authenticity
Feeling alive on a dying planet
How does one live on a dying planet and what does it mean to talk about his reality? What does it mean to confront this reality and relate to it in the presence of others? This has been something I have not really known what to do with for years. What’s it like being alive … Continue reading Feeling alive on a dying planet
Authentic living and burning my boat
My deepest longing has always been to live an authentic life true to myself so that I can connect with others on a deep level. It’s obviously hard though as fears and comforts get in the way. A lot has changed since my last post (more on what I have been discovering in future posts), … Continue reading Authentic living and burning my boat
Cultivating the safety needed to turn towards sensations of anxiety
Healing from anxiety is ultimately about developing the courage to feel unpleasant sensations, thoughts, and emotions. It’s our inability to be present with these experiences that leads to unskillful behaviors like obsessing and emotional eating. However, it’s not always easy to turn towards these sensations. Often they are incredibly strong and can seem downright scary. … Continue reading Cultivating the safety needed to turn towards sensations of anxiety
How rewards drive anxious cravings for more rewards
or Why scratching an itch feels good until you’re itching all over the place.... Our minds want to move towards pleasurable experiences and away from painful ones. This creates feelings of anxiety in the body. These feelings show up as either anxious excitement(moving towards) or anxious fear( moving away). Interestingly, they both feel similar in … Continue reading How rewards drive anxious cravings for more rewards
The endless search for information: interest vs. deprivation curiosity
Over the years, one of my biggest struggles has been how to balance the curious love of learning new things with the anxious need to consume more and more information that often came with it. I had no idea how to make sense of my love for learning with this anxious, contracted feeling that I … Continue reading The endless search for information: interest vs. deprivation curiosity
Why we must make friends with OCD(and anxiety)- a little story
The less we truly know OCD (or anxiety in general), the more we struggle with it. The more we get to know OCD, the less of a struggle we have. Below is a little story to illustrate this: In it I'll touch upon the 4 steps of RAIN (Recognize, Accept/allow, Investigate, Nurture). This is the … Continue reading Why we must make friends with OCD(and anxiety)- a little story
The limitations of ERP treatment for OCD- (and what mindfulness training can offer)
Here are some thoughts on the treatment of OCD that I have developed over the past 10 years of exploring my mind through conventional and alternative/mindfulness based approaches to treating OCD. I hope that some of these ideas may be of some benefit to the OCD community. None of what I write is to deny … Continue reading The limitations of ERP treatment for OCD- (and what mindfulness training can offer)
How embodied connection can help us face our social fears
Embodied connection can help us move closer to our social values and face our social fears. When we are not acting according to our social values, we are often unaware of what’s happening in the moment. Despite our best intentions, we end up acting in the same ways we have always acted. There have been … Continue reading How embodied connection can help us face our social fears
Key ideas from the blog
Here is a little outline of some of the key concepts that I write about on this blog and how I organize them into a model for healing anxiety and working with difficult emotions. I also added a short “about me” part at the end so you can put the model into the context of … Continue reading Key ideas from the blog
The fear of getting sick
These are really challenging times for everyone and there are a number of reasons why anxiety is likely to be increasing among a whole host of people. Numerous factors like the health and safety of oneself and loved ones, financial insecurity, job insecurity, loss of predictability about the future, political and racial/social instability, etc are … Continue reading The fear of getting sick
There is hope for OCD
A short note on hope for OCD: Are you struggling with OCD and finding conventional gold standard treatments to be missing something? Do you do your exposure therapy and no matter how many exposures you do, you find OCD morphing and presenting itself in new ways? It always seems to come back. Do you find … Continue reading There is hope for OCD
A model for social freedom
Social Connection model or “What am I unwilling to feel socially?” Connection-Benefits us and others (we all want connection) Connection (with ourselves and others)requires contacting the direct felt sense of what we experience in our bodies and making friends with it. Our bodies move towards pleasant sensations and away from unpleasant sensationsOur fears around connection are … Continue reading A model for social freedom
Performance vs. Vulnerability and internal vs external rewards
In earlier posts I have mapped out some habit loops and explained how our brains seek to do the behaviors that give us the biggest rewards. This reward based learning model becomes a problem when we are always seeking external rewards to feel better. The problem with external rewards is that they are not dependable … Continue reading Performance vs. Vulnerability and internal vs external rewards
What really triggers anxiety? An exploration
Here are some thoughts on how I understand anxiety and what triggers anxiety. I encourage you to check these ideas out to see if they match up with anxiety from your own direct experience. I am curious to get some of your comments and feedback to see how much of this resonates with you! … Continue reading What really triggers anxiety? An exploration
Social connection and social habit loops (my story)
Recognizing Social Habit loops In previous posts, I have talked about how the first step in befriending anxiety is to become aware of how the mind works by mapping out our habit loops around anxiety. If we are not aware of what’s happening, it will be impossible to change. The following article talks about some … Continue reading Social connection and social habit loops (my story)
Healing OCD and anxiety-my story(the long version)
Healing OCD and Anxiety- My story (the long version) While certainly not always a pleasant path(what treatment for OCD is though?!), my experience has shown me that there is astonishing healing possible when combining exposure therapy with mindfulness practices and training. In the long run, and with practice, it’s the mindfulness practice itself that becomes … Continue reading Healing OCD and anxiety-my story(the long version)
Coyote, fear, and anxiety triggers
I want to recount a little story that happened to me recently to show how anxiety habit loops can be triggered in subtle ways. Recently my Mom told me about an encounter she had with a coyote on the street where we were living together a month ago. She told me the location of where … Continue reading Coyote, fear, and anxiety triggers
Recommended Reading
Recommended Reading! Over the years I have been fortunate enough to read many books related to anxiety, psychology, healing, mindfulness, mind body medicine etc. Below are a sample of some of the books that I really enjoyed and would recommend. I have starred books that are my personal favorites and helped me most on my … Continue reading Recommended Reading
Treating OCD with the mindfulness and compassion tool RAIN
Three steps to healing OCD with RAIN Mapping OCD habit loopsSeeing clearly that OCD doesn't feel goodBefriending OCD with RAIN. Replacing compulsions with more rewarding behaviors like mindfulness and compassion. 1. The first step is to get a clear understanding about how our OCD habit loops are driving the neverending nature of OCD. We need … Continue reading Treating OCD with the mindfulness and compassion tool RAIN
The heart of RAIN-Investigate and Nurture
In the last post, I introduced the RA in the acronym RAIN, a powerful tool to work with anxiety and difficult emotions. First, we learn to pause and recognize what’s happening in the body. Next, we accept and allow the experience to just be there without trying to change it. The heart of the RAIN … Continue reading The heart of RAIN-Investigate and Nurture
Out of the anxiety habit loop- Recognize and Allow with RAIN
Mindfulness and Compassion offer us a way out of the anxiety habit loop because upon investigation they turn out to be more rewarding than our previous anxiety behaviors. In this article I want to introduce a tool for dealing with anxiety and difficult emotions called RAIN or the RAIN of self compassion. This acronym has … Continue reading Out of the anxiety habit loop- Recognize and Allow with RAIN
The anxiety habit loop isn’t really that rewarding!
After we get a better understanding of how our minds work by mapping out our habit loops, the next step to befriending our anxiety and finding some degree of freedom is to start to get really curious about what we are getting from our anxious habit loops. We can use mindfulness to investigate the rewards … Continue reading The anxiety habit loop isn’t really that rewarding!
Anxiety habit loops
The best model I have found for understanding how anxiety works is the simple reward based learning model from Dr. Jud Brewer at Brown university. Brewer is unique in that he is a trained psychiatrist and scientist and also has been practicing meditation for many years. I was fortunate enough to take a class based … Continue reading Anxiety habit loops
Belief, mindfulness, and “I am enough”
With mindful awareness, we get to choose to feed the beliefs that lead to a more meaningful life. We can choose “I am enough”. As we continue to practice meditation, we begin to attune to the changing experience of life both internally and externally. During a meditation session my mind might be drawn to an … Continue reading Belief, mindfulness, and “I am enough”
Mindfulness, how it can help with anxiety, and resourcing revisited (with practices)
So what is mindfulness and how can it help if you are suffering with anxiety? Mindfulness is really about coming back to the present moment; back to our senses. It’s a present moment awareness that can befriend life’s varied experiences without judgement. We can become aware of sights, smells, sounds, tastes, body sensations, emotions, and … Continue reading Mindfulness, how it can help with anxiety, and resourcing revisited (with practices)
A simple mindfulness practice and the mental stories that keep us from practicing
In order to be able to investigate and get curious about our thoughts and emotions, we must feel a sense of safety. In my last post I discussed two resource anchors (grounding and self-compassion) that help us to feel safe in the body. In this post I want to talk about another challenge to befriending … Continue reading A simple mindfulness practice and the mental stories that keep us from practicing
Resource anchors for cultivating safety
In order to turn towards our difficult body sensations and emotions and get curious about them, we must first feel a requisite degree of safety. If we have spent our whole lives running from our body sensations then the healing that comes from feeling them is going to be a little bit scary. In psychology, … Continue reading Resource anchors for cultivating safety
Befriending OCD with mindfulness and compassion training-(my healing journey)
My experience has shown me that healing from anxiety/OCD is possible when combining exposure therapy with mindfulness practices and training. In the long run, and with practice, it’s the mindfulness practice itself that becomes the exposure therapy. I learned to turn towards the difficult sensations of OCD, anxiety, and panic and get curious about their … Continue reading Befriending OCD with mindfulness and compassion training-(my healing journey)
