WHAT IF HAPPINESS WAS THE ABSENCE OF NEGATIVE EMOTION? <3 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 at 32 I had my first baby... But instead of feeling happier... I was bombarded by a whole rollercoaster of negative painful emotions that NO ONE was talking about: Here is an example of all the emotions I would feel in the span of a few minutes. ---------------------------------------- - FAILURE for not being able to exclusively breastfeed - GUILT for not stimulating my baby at that moment - FEAR that something was going to happen to my baby - FEAR about the BPA in her toys - FEAR about the fluoride in the water - FEAR that maybe I hadn't babyproofed enough - GUILT for not doing enough parenting research - GUILT/REMORSE for having cried so much in pregnancy - SHAME for having failed "attachment parenting" and "La Leche League" - SHAME for not belonging... - LONELY and ISOLATED... - SHAME for not being able to perform motherhood well enough in front of others. - JUDGED by other mothers - FEAR that I was going to screw something up and ruin my baby forever - FEAR that my baby was going to get sick and I would make a bad decision. - GUILT that I wasn't interacting with my baby, due to having to cook a meal... - SHAME that I was FAILING motherhood... - SHAME that I wasn't smart enough to be a mother... - SHAME that I didn't deserve to be a mother... -------------------------------------------- NO ONE was talking about any of these emotions... No one... I heard about the mental health diagnosis of "postpartum depression"... But, the rollercoaster of emotions I was feeling was not the simple state of "depression"... It was so much more! What on earth was going on? . So, I did a lot of research and found out that these emotions were actually really common in motherhood... with 50% of mothers suffering intense emotional distress during the first 5 years! I thought about how we are almost never encouraged to talk about what we are REALLY FEELING in our society. Emotions like Shame, Guilt, Powerlessness, Grief, and Loneliness are almost never talked about... never acknowledged. . I realized that... Since we can only ever feel ONE EMOTION at one moment in time... HAPPINESS actually lied in the ABSENCE OF PAINFUL EMOTIONS... all those emotions I had been ignoring all my life! Happiness was not some elusive emotion that I might find some day if I kept traveling, kept having babies... kept working towards some goal. . Happiness lied in... 1. IDENTIFYING what emotions I was really feeling. 2. TALKING about these emotions with others. 3. REALIZING that I was in fact NOT ALONE. 4. IDENTIFYING where these emotions were coming from. 5. FREEING myself from the CAUSES of these emotions in my mind. 6. CONNECTING with people and helping them do the same. <3 And THIS was what enabled me to find my happiness in motherhood... and have a model of happiness to follow for the rest of my life... . Let me know if you'd like to find out more about how I can help you free yourself from the painful emotions at the root of your Anxiety and Depression... and find your happiness as well. To the emotion-based path to happiness... <3 Marni Penner A Kanadai Coach :) . P.S. Here is a picture of the year when I finally freed myself from all those painful emotions... and found my happiness in motherhood. This was also the year that I got my coaching certification and started helping others do the same.
Frissítve: 2020. máj. 31.