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

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 gestal

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

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

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

Anger is one of those emotions that can cause us a lot of guilt, remorse, and being labelled with a so-called "anger problem". :( So what is anger really... and what is the solution? Well... Anger is the emotion we feel when we wish that REALITY was DIFFERENT than it is... 🔸 We wish that WE were different than we are... or 🔸 We wish that our LIVES were different than they are... or 🔸 We wish that OTHER PEOPLE were different than they are... . So, our anger is trying to tel

WHAT IS THE PATH OUT OF DEPRESSION? <3 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 . On the weekend, I talked to a friend of mine on the phone who had been feeling severely depressed and suicidal... When I asked him why he was feeling this way, he said it was because hi

ACHIEVING THE WISDOM OF "THE SERENITY PRAYER" <3 A friend of mine has found a good counselor, and I was asking all kinds of questions about her counselor's approach. It was so interesting to observe the similarities and differences between her counselor and me... But even though our approaches were different... the end goal was the same. . My friend and I came to a cool conclusion: The goal of all good therapists, coaches, counselors, and spiritual healers is to accompan

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

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

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?

I discovered my framework to anxiety in quite the unconventional way... 1. I overcame my crippling Social Anxiety on my own in my 20's, and I kept everything a secret for years. 2. I got Postpartum & Generalized Anxiety in my 30's, and I did tons of alternative research to overcome it. 3. I became a Postpartum Anxiety & Depression Coach, and I helped mothers overcome even the most crippling panic-based anxieties. 4. I overcame my Performance Anxiety so that I could be an onl

One of the most frustrating things I experience is when people tell me that my clients are "broken"... WHAT?!! What does the word "broken" even mean? I myself have gone through a lot of shit. Does that make ME broken too? . I personally believe that... NONE of us are broken... Or ALL of us are broken... There is certainly no DIVIDING LINE between "whole people" and "broken people" in my mind. 😆 . What if word "broken" actually means "currently unable to handle the status quo

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

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