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

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

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 had really bad generalized anxiety in motherhood... It was so bad that I became determined to find the solution for myself and everyone else. I had to find a way to free myself from that horrendous emotional roller coaster... so that I could have the emotional space to feel positive emotions instead. . So, I did tons of research into all areas of the social sciences... and I started identifying every single emotion I was feeling... "WHAT am I feeling right now?" "WHY am I

Our society has very strict "feeling rules" of what people are supposed to feel in different situations... For example... 🔸 Men should only feel STRONG EMOTIONS and never feel weak or vulnerable. 🔸 Young Mothers should only feel BLISS & FULFILLMENT in every second of the day. 🔸 Everyone should feel HAPPY, and SMILEY, and LOVE talking about the weather... 🤣 If ever our feelings don't correspond to these "feeling rules", then we are supposed to TRY to feel the appropriate

Why did you label me? Why did you look down on me? Why did you keep yourself a secret the way you did? Why did you focus on my symptoms? And obsess over my thoughts? Why didn't you see what my REAL PROBLEM actually was? Why were you so distant? Why didn't you HELP me? Why did you make my problems WORSE? . It's because YOU also had problems... That's why you studied psychology... But psychology didn't help you either... It wasn't your fault... It was the fault of academia... M

One of the most painful things about anxiety is that it can put us way behind our adult peers... :( We can find ourselves "late" in our... - Studies... - Work... - Dating... - Living situation... - Financial situation... - Etc... The fact that we don't follow the typical adult timeline can make us feel what I call the third wave of shame... We feel shame for being behind on the timeline of life... Due to anxiety... I finished my University degree at 27... I started dating whe

I was in the midst of making a video, and I started having this crazy irrational fear about a particular person not liking what I was saying in the video. 😂 I thought... "Oh no... I am having THIS fear again?!!" And then I realized that this irrational fear was just a SIGN that I had much more important things to do right now than make this video. Our anxiety & irrational fears are a SIGN, a SYMPTOM that we are not listening to our own self-honesty... I was trying to negl

I used to be the biggest perfectionist on the planet... I would make an itsy-bitsy mistake... and then it would spiral into a huge "shame storm"... I would feel one shame... and then another shame... and another shame... and another shame... Until I was absolutely convinced that I was the most despicable human being on the planet, who was flawed in every imaginable way... . And then I would go into my PAST... and bring up shame after shame after shame... And then I would go

On Saturday, I finished the course I have been taking on Grief & Loss. The current grief & loss research is right in line with what I believe. Grief & loss are viewed as NORMAL human emotions, and are not pathologized the way that anxiety & depression tend to be. . But in my opinion, ALL emotional problems can be processed in a similar way... by... 1. TALKING about what we really feel with someone we trust... 2. Identifying the PRIMARY NEGATIVE EMOTIONS like shame, guilt, s

Highly sensitive people often experience generalized anxiety (and other anxieties) when we are living a life that is too hard... We assume that the problem must lie in us... WE are flawed... WE are ill... WE are incompetent... WE are fools... When in reality, the problem lies in the fact that highly sensitive people have VERY HIGH HUMAN NEEDS which are so often NOT met in modern society. . So we have to ask ourselves... - What do i FEEL? - What do I NEED? - What do I WANT?

The first step to overcoming anxiety is to not view anxiety as an innate personality trait. Anxiety is not a part of who you are. It is a SECONDARY SYMPTOM that is being caused by something else underneath. . Personality traits are things like - introversion, - high sensitivity, - being an empath, etc... . But, anxiety is completely different... It is an indication of a PROBLEM... It is a SYMPTOM... It is a SIGN... Of painful emotions or a painful situation under

With every single anxiety I've ever had... I was terrified of the worst-case scenario... 🔸 With Social Anxiety... I was terrified that everyone was going to reject me. 🔸 With Postpartum Anxiety... I was terrified that something bad was going to happen to my children... 🔸 With Internet Anxiety, I was terrified that a "hater" was going to come and tear my work to shreds... All of these fears consumed me... in every minute of every day... :( . At first, I told myself, "Just b

HOW I OVERCAME MY GENERALIZED ANXIETY (Roller Coaster of Emotions from Hell) For the first 36 years of my life I had horrible generalized anxiety... It felt like this horrible ROLLER COASTER of EMOTIONAL PAIN that went on and on and on and on... and never stopped. However, since I had had it all my life, I somehow accepted it as part of who I was... I was a Basket Case... and that was that. . However, when I became a young mother of 2 babies 18 months apart, the roller c

When we have anxiety, it is really common to get caught up in a vicious spiral of doom. We feel HORRIBLE in this present moment... and so we predict that we will always feel this horrible for ever more. Why does this happen? Well, they have found that our brains are only able to feel ONE EMOTION at any one moment in time. Therefore, if we feel horrible now... then we will imagine feeling horrible in the future as well. In other words, we "contaminate" our predictions of the f

I started my coaching career as a Postpartum Anxiety Coach... and what I noticed was that my clients seemed to be "escaping" into anxiety... They had all experienced way too much SHAME and FAILURE during pregnancy, birth or early motherhood... They felt like they were failing motherhood, womanhood, and life. :( These emotions were so painful that they literally "escaped" into terrifying irrational fears... such as... . 1. The fear that their baby was going to die... (OCD S

THE UNRESOLVABLE ISSUE... I have this issue... that I have never been able to solve... It just stays and stays... making my life a living hell... . Is there a solution? Is there some way I could change my own mind... Change my perspective... Change the way I live my life? . What if I start talking about it? Start giving it a name? What if I write out exactly what I feel and why? Then will I find a solution? What IS the solution? I won't know until I give this pr

We often spend our whole lives... wishing that we LOOKED differently than we do... wishing that our PERSONALITY was different than it is... wishing that our LIFE CIRCUMSTANCES were different than they are... or wishing that our PAST had gone differently than it went... . We never talk about how common this is... to have this alternate reality haunting us... harassing us... causing way too much guilt and shame... We believe that we SHOULD be that person in our mind... When r

We often hear about the power of journaling... and I fully agree... But for me, one additional factor makes it so much more effective for me... I prefer to journal to SOMEONE who can help me... By writing to this person, I usually end up helping myself. <3 . This is why I am passionate about my clients being able to journal to me at any time. There is so much power in being able to talk through our problems in the present moment... while giving us both more insight into what

On Sunday night, I got banned from facebook groups for 24 hours due to sharing my memes into too many groups. When the ban was lifted, I found myself feeling really scared... 😰 What IS the limit of how much I can post in groups? What behaviour would lead to the next level of a 3-day ban? . I could live my whole life worrying about this happening again... Envisioning the worst-case scenario... of receiving that notification that I had been banned forever... But that is no way

At the root of so much anxiety are societal expectations... We are supposed to BE someone that we're not... We are supposed to be DOING something that we're not... We are supposed to be SAYING something that we're not... . We think the problem lies in US... because we feel so pained inside... When in reality... the problem lies in this DISCONNECT between who we really ARE and who we are "supposed" to be on the outside... However, people with anxiety... can become the stronges

I have had people ask me why I don't write more about depression... Well, I view depression as the state of despair we experience when we believe there are NO SOLUTIONS to our problems. For my clients, their problem is usually their anxiety. Anxiety is the first indicator that... "ALARM, ALARM, There is a problem. You can't handle your environment or the perspective that you have in this environment. You must make some sort of a change." So, once I convince my clients tha

This week, someone asked me how I acquired my knowledge on anxiety... I wrote... I had really bad postpartum & generalized anxiety in my 30's... However, neither the medical model nor the mainstream psychological model could explain what was happening to me or where the solution lied. So, I set out to do my own research in all areas of the social sciences so that I could figure it out on my own. Such as... - relational psychology - sociology - anthropology - European gesta