There were two roads to choose from... Both contained suffering... Both contained pain... . One road was easy... The other road was hard... . The EASY road required doing very little... But his suffering would remain... and remain... . The HARD road required doing so much... Pushing through resistance... Pushing through the pain... Dealing with the past... Dealing with the shame... . He stayed on the EASY road For years and years and years... . And then one day... he decided.

When I had severe, crippling anxiety in my 20's... it seemed that NOTHING was going to work... I had tried CBT, Psychoanalysis, Exposure Therapy, Beta-Blocker Meds, SSRIs... But all these things just MADE IT WORSE... :( Since these "normal solutions" hadn't worked... maybe I had to find a way to "shake myself up" in a different way?! So, one day in the end of August 2001, when I was 25 years old, I postponed my last year of University, and I bought an impulse plane ticket t

Life is a race with ourselves. To win the race, all we have to do is take ONE step forward today from where we were yesterday. The moment we look sideways or backwards at what other people are doing, we start losing the race... We lose our footing... We trip and fall flat on our face... We idolize other people, and we feel really bad about ourselves... . When in fact... We human beings LOVE moving forward... We get a real THRILL from bettering ourselves. So keep looking forwa

When I had social anxiety... everyone tried to "help" me by cluttering my head with shit... I was given - SCRIPTS of what I should say... - QUESTIONS that I should ask... - TECHNIQUES to debate with my thoughts... However, I ONLY HAD ONE BRAIN. I wasn't able to both have a conversation with someone AND deal with all this cognitive clutter my head! . So, what was the answer then... if it didn't lie in cognitive clutter? My solution was to SIMPLIFY my HEAD... and step into

I used to have a little angel-type creature on my shoulder called "Time Machine Marni". She believed that I could travel back in time and give my "former self" shit. "Time Machine Marni" was a real tight-ass perfectionist because she had the wisdom of hindsight. . 🔸 If I used the wrong word... "Time Machine Marni" told me to go back in time and correct it... 🔸 If I SAID something... "Time Machine Marni" told me that I shouldn't have said it... 🔸 If I DIDN'T SAY something..

Most of us have been raised with the firm belief that we must "finish what we started" and "not be a quitter"... We are raised to IGNORE our intuition and what we feel in the present... and blindly finish what we started... whether it is a school program, a job, a relationship, a house purchase, a wedding, a volunteer position, an activity, etc... This can be extremely detrimental for highly sensitive people like us. In fact, it is one of the MAIN CAUSES of Situational Anx

There is a lot of talk about Artificial Intelligence these days... In my mind, AI could never replace the joy we get from creating something... from our own minds... our own insights... our own experiences. My current Hungarian YouTube channel is providing me with so much joy. 🥰 🔹 It only has 28 subscribers... 🔹 It is not changing the world... 🔹 It is definitely not perfect... I am speaking Hungarian! 😂 An inspiration comes over me... I sit in my armchair... I set up the

I used to have really crippling Social Anxiety with everyone... including family members... Nothing helped me... therapy, medication, nothing... :( Then one day when I was 25 years old, I bought an impulse plane ticket to Budapest, Hungary to spend 8 months learning Hungarian. Maybe THIS could shake me out of this hell... . I lived in a student residence, and I managed to find a friend who truly understood me... and I was able to be fully honest with him. By the end of my s

One of the prevailing beliefs in the field is that in order to overcome Social Anxiety, we just need to expose ourselves to PEOPLE... and then our "fear of people" will fade away... This is a similar to the logic of what might help with the fear of spiders. (See picture below. 😂) However, social anxiety is not as SIMPLE as the fear of spiders. Human interactions are so much more COMPLICATED than that. . When I had crippling social anxiety, no matter how much I exposed mys

One day when I was looking through my clients' notes... I noticed that many of my clients had only stayed with their previous therapists for exactly THREE WEEKS... I kept finding... "Tried therapy a few times in the past. Only stayed for 3 weeks." And then I remembered that I too had fallen into a depression at Week 3 with my coach when I was overcoming my anxiety of putting myself out on the internet... I thought back to all those foreign languages that I had started to

I was 21 years old... And suddenly one day... I was scared of my best friend... I had scary thoughts fill my head making me so nervous... I couldn't talk couldn't focus... I was absolutely terrified... And then I became scared of other people... Until I was terrified of everyone... Everyone... My life as I had known it was gone... I lived in a bubble... Unable to connect Unable to make friends... Unable to do the easiest of tasks... And it lasted for years and years... Until

As terrible as anxiety feels, I actually view anxiety as an ESCAPE. What happens is that we feel such painful Primary Emotions (like shame, failure, guilt, sadness, powerlessness, loneliness, etc.)... but instead of addressing them, we ESCAPE into terrifying irrational fears. Our Primary Emotions are SO PAINFUL that we resist them however we can. For example... 1. We ESCAPE our emotions and go into ANXIETY. 2. We NUMB our emotions and fall into DEPRESSION. 3. We EXTERNALIZE

Since ChatGPT was released in November 2022, I have refused to consume or produce AI content. In fact, I have never used AI... 🔸 Not for researching... 🔸 Not for idea generation... 🔸 Not for summarizing... 🔸 And certainly not for writing, or editing my work. There seems to be the expectation that all of us will have to use it eventually... . This week, I came to the firm decision: "No. I will continue creating content in my own way... using my own head." I would also like

There is a lot of talk about finding our passion & purpose... but this topic usually leaves people more confused than ever. We end up wondering, "Why haven't I found my passion & purpose yet, and why is it so difficult to find?" . Well, it is because passion & purpose is an EMOTIONAL PROCESS. It cannot be planned through logical and rational thought processes. However, our society tells us to be rational & logical in everything we do. We are encouraged to be a whole society o

Since going online, I have had a lot of "firsts"... My first VULNERABLE post... My first post that provoked a lot of "UNFRIENDING"... The first time I got "BLOCKED" by an individual and a group... My first online "HATER" who tore me to threads... . Every time I had a "first", I was filled with so many emotions... shame, fear, overwhelm, dread, self-doubt, etc... At times the emotions would get so strong that I was barely hanging on... trying to keep posting... keep conne

We often fall into depression when we don't see any SOLUTION to our problems. This can make us feel hopeless... powerless... and trapped... :( It can make us feel like giving up... because there doesn't appear to be any doable solution in sight. <3 . This week, I was talking with a new client of mine who had been feeling severely depressed and suicidal... When I asked him why he was feeling this way, he said it was because his old therapist had said that she could not hel

One of my LEAST FAVORITE expressions in the English language is the expression "self-care". 🤣 It is a very naggy term that makes us feel like that in addition to all the things we "should" be doing... we should also be "caring" for ourselves. Well, I would like to flip this whole expression right on its head... Not everything in life is a "should"... What we are really talking about here is "getting our HAPPINESS NEEDS met", "having fun", and "living the life we want to l

We often look at the current "evidence"... and believe that it determines our WORTH... - "I have NO FRIENDS... so I am not worthy of friendship." - "I have NO ROMANTIC PARTNER... so I am not worthy of love." - "I have NO JOB... so I am not worthy of work." - "I have NO MONEY... so I am not worthy of success." . We look at the current evidence, and believe that it determines our WORTH and our FUTURE... When in reality... Our WORTH is a constant... and our FUTURE can be whatev

Yesterday someone said to me, "I read your last post in the Google Translate format, and it sounded REALLY RUDE in Hungarian." I was like, "Google Translate?!!! How could I possibly prevent THIS from happening in the future?!" God... Then I realized, THIS is why I had writer's block all those years! . WRITER'S BLOCK is when we worry about what the most obscure groups of people might think... (for example, "Google translate readers", Uncle Barry, old classmates, trolls, that e

During my 20's, I was always looking for happiness OUTSIDE of myself... I would hop from country to country, learning language after language... I would feel happy during the first month in a new country... but then I would get restless... thinking that happiness must lie in a new place, a new experience. If only I could find a husband and have a baby... then maybe I could find happiness. Maybe then I would finally feel settled and at peace. . Well... at 31, I got married and

In our society, if someone has problems with anxiety or depression... we usually blame the INDIVIDUAL themselves. We assume that the problem must lie in the INDIVIDUAL's mind, personality, thoughts, beliefs, or biology. I, on the other hand, see anxiety and depression as being a SOCIETAL problem. When I say this... people accuse me of shifting the "blame" from the individual to society. In our society, we believe that there always has to be SOMEONE to blame. So, if I am

One of my clients just freed herself from a pervasive shame that was affecting every single aspect of her life... causing anxiety, preventing her from connecting with people, preventing her from being happy... And this week if lifted. She told me that she has been having feelings of happiness unlike any feeling she has had in a long time. <3 It is a feeling of gratitude... of relief... of joy... of being truly present in the moment... . Anxiety and Depression are often caus

I would write a simple post... about nothing... I would click the blue "Post" button... And in 5 second's time, I would feel excruciating pain... Like someone was going to burst into the room and start screaming at me, Criticizing at me... Giving me royal shit... There was nothing WRONG with the post itself. I felt that it was ME who was flawed... And by posting, I was exposing these flaws to the world... . And then I finally realized... this too is a form of SOCIAL ANXIETY!

In early parenthood, my relationship went to shit! We were constantly bickering over everything... We were living in "scarcity"... with us both feeling like there was not enough time, fun, or happiness to go around. Neither of us had any time to ourselves... and it always felt like the OTHER person was to blame. So, we kept bickering non-stop, feeling resentment towards each other... and there seemed to be no solution in sight. . This continued on for a while until I realized