Blog
Secrecy: How Shame and Secrets Hold You Back
And a big way our disbelief in our own worth presents itself is around the line between being a private person and being secretive person, and not knowing whether it’s okay to keep some things private, and not even realizing when we’re being secretive or lying in an attempt to people-please, protect connection or to…
Read MoreThe Gift of Wintering: How to Relish Winter Rest
I’ve been thinking a lot about wintering. This winter, I’m really pausing a lot to remind myself that winter, Capricorn season, it’s a time of rest. It’s a time of renewal. It’s a time of hibernation. I mean, if you live in the northern hemisphere, how many bunnies are there in your yard right now?…
Read MoreResolutions, Regrets & Commitment
We can use resolutions as a buffer against our regret around what we didn’t accomplish in the last year without pausing to ask ourselves why we didn’t meet our goals or to process our emotions about the decisions we made (like if we made them from self-hate like weight loss goals). What we need instead…
Read MoreYour Wants & Needs in Relationships
Understanding the difference between wants and needs can be a challenging line to walk from our codependent habits. We don’t believe that we can meet our needs so we expect everyone else to do it for us, and if they don’t meet our needs, they’ve failed us. We’ll discuss wants and needs in relationships—romantic, friendship,…
Read MoreThe Emotional World of Wants and Needs
We conflate wants and needs so often and I don’t think it’s very good for our wellness, our mental health. So biologically, as human mammals, we have the need for oxygen, glucose, you know, food, calories. We need water, shelter, love, community, safety. These are the things we need to survive and thrive as humans.…
Read MoreLet Your Wants Be Your Guiding North Star
Wants are the “it would be rad to have it” things, not the things that sustain life. I want to truly deeply celebrate our wants and our needs, but first, I want to share six reasons why it matters that you, that we, from our codependent, perfectionist and people pleasing habits get in touch with…
Read MoreHow to Overcome All-or-Nothing Thinking
Starting to recognize when we’re in old habits, like all-or-nothing thinking, is so vital if we want to change them. So we can start to live our lives in emotional adulthood and not in emotional childhood. And to do so, we need to raise our awareness so we can challenge our long-held belief that all…
Read MoreAll-or-Nothing Thinking, Codependency and Perfectionism
Following closely behind the season of bountiful buffering, as I’ve come to call the holidays, is New Year’s resolution time. It’s this time of magical thinking that says tomorrow, New Year’s day, I shall awaken a wildly new and different person with completely different habits that I will complete with utter perfection day after day…
Read MoreNavigating Food During the Holidays
Dana Monsees is a dietitian, nutritionist and body image, body love coach. She does phenomenal work to help folks both figure out what the best foods are for them, what nutrients support them, and drop the shame stories about food. Drop the stories that can be so moralistic. Some foods are good, some foods are…
Read MoreThe 5 Love Languages & Thought Work
As someone who reads, thinks and talks a lot about relationships, I think it’s high time that we talk about the 5 love languages, which is a framework for thinking about how we give and receive love popularized by Gary Chapman in his 1992 book, which has been a NYTimes bestseller for about 10,000 years…
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