Blog - The Unlocked Heart, 08 Jan 2019 21:27:40 +0000en-USSite-Server v6.0.0-20463-20463 ( you are looking for guidance in improving your emotional intelligence <br/>and learning healthy empathy, welcome!  Here you will find clarity around <br/>what your emotions are doing and why, and how to work with them skillfully <br/>to achieve ease and flow in your emotional life.Why Trying to Stay Positive Can Make Anxiety WorseAnxietyGriefJessica MooreWed, 23 Jan 2019 02:17:00 +0000 of us have learned to avoid our sadness in order to stay positive, but that can have unforseen consequences. Sadness and grief are inherently calming and grounding, so if we don't have access to those emotions, our anxiety and fear can grow out of control.Today I’d like to share with you why we need sadness, and how being too positive can make anxiety worse. To illustrate this, let me use an event I’m sure you’ve experienced before.

Imagine that you're driving to an appointment, and you're late. Your anxiety is urging you to hurry as fast as you can (but not too fast, because anxiety also doesn't want you to get pulled over!). You see a green light in front of you, and you speed up a bit to make it through...but then it turns red right in front of you, forcing you to a sudden stop.

As you sit there in front of that light, impatiently waiting, you let out a sigh. That sigh is your soft sadness coming forward to help your anxiety to chill out a bit, knowing that there's nothing you can do but wait. Sadness is all about surrendering to the flow of life, so it shows up to help you accept the extra minute your trip will take, and to let go of your desire to make it through that light.

So now imagine what would happen if you weren't able to access sadness, if you had learned not to let yourself feel it? Your anxiety might amp up even more, stressing you out unnecessarily and perhaps causing you to drive even more recklessly.

Now imagine this playing out in other situations, day after day. Think of all the stress that would accumulate on your system if your sadness wasn't ever there to calm your anxiety down!

Anxiety is a form of fear, warning us of future dangers and wanting us to take action to prevent them.

For this reason, anxiety has an energizing and activating effect on the nervous system. Sadness, in contrast, is soothing and relaxing, because it’s all about letting go and accepting what is.

Sadness is meant to balance anxiety and fear: to regulate fear when it gets too intense to handle, to calm our anxiety when it goes on too long, and to let it all go when there simply isn't anything we can do about it.

Sadness seems like an easy emotion to feel (so why wouldn't we?), but many of us have developed a habit of suppressing our sadness.

Perhaps as a child we learned we had to stay upbeat, positive, and happy in order to feel loved and accepted. Perhaps our role in the family was the clown, who always cheered everyone else up - and that became our identity.

Or perhaps we've learned to rely on anxiety to give us drive and energy, so that we could be successful and high-achieving. If that's who we felt we needed to be in order to receive our parents' love and approval, it would make sense that we learned to deny our sadness, because we felt we couldn’t relax.

But sooner or later, we inevitably pay the price for this imbalance. Even when our anxiety helps us to be high-functioning, we can only sustain it for so long before it either gets out of control, or causes us to burn out (emotionally or physically).

Another reason why we might avoid sadness is if we’ve experienced deep loss in our lives and our grief feels too overwhelming, so we learned to hold the grief at bay with humor and positive thinking.

Grief is much more difficult to feel than the everyday emotion of sadness, so it's even more common for people to avoid and suppress it. Grief can feel like a looming tidal wave that would utterly drown us if we let it carry us out to sea.

But the thing about grief is that the longer we bottle it up and refuse to feel it, the bigger and more overwhelming it will feel. Grief doesn't simply just go away with time; it stays within us weighing on our hearts, until it is fully felt. This can be for the rest of our lives, if we're not careful!

So we can easily get into a feedback loop where we avoid grief because it feels too painful, which makes the grief even more threatening, which then makes us even more determined to avoid it. And so on.

Anxiety is the perfect ally to help us avoid grief, because it loves keeping us busy.

Anxiety can come up with 30 things that need to be done at any moment - and it wants to us do all of them RIGHT NOW.

This dynamic of holding grief at bay with anxiety usually happens unconsciously. So when anxiety finally goes too far, and people start to try to calm it down, they often don't realize that their anxiety is there to help them to avoid the emotion that they're even more determined not to feel.

Because as long as they remain unwilling to feel their hidden grief, their anxiety probably won't go away. Not only because of the unconscious way it’s helping them (creating a distraction from grief), but also because the person is lacking the grounding that sadness and grief normally bring.

If you're experiencing chronic anxiety and you suspect that this might be a factor, the only way to truly fix it is to let grief and sadness back in, by being willing to feel them. And in the case of grief, this means embarking on a journey of diving into the grief you carry deep within, and allowing yourself to truly grieve.

If this feels overwhelming, like the grief would just be too heavy to bear, don't worry. (Your anxiety can relax!) There are ways to intentionally engage with grief that help you move through it quickly, and that create a container for it so it doesn't take over your entire life. You don't have to put everything on hold to do this!

To find out more about how to efficiently work through grief, read this article here. And if you’re ready to go but you’re feeling the need for one-on-one support, sign up for a free Emotional Breakthrough session with me and I'll help you clarify your path forward.

Why Trying to Stay Positive Can Make Anxiety Worse
The Anatomy of Grief: How to Grieve WellGriefJessica MooreTue, 08 Jan 2019 21:48:15 +0000 is one of the most essential emotions we can feel, and yet we so often turn away from it...even without meaning to. And any grief that we don't feel will stay with us, potentially forever. But by understanding how grief works, we can more effectively and easily through it.To be human is to grieve. Feeling grief is an inevitable part of life, because loss is inevitable. And more than that, grief is an expression of love, because the more we care, the deeper we grieve.

We need to grieve not only because it honors who (and what) we’ve lost, because also because it’s how we adjust to the losses we experience in life. We don’t just miss people deeply in our hearts when they're no longer with us, but we also miss them on a physical level as well.

Just as we come to emotionally rely on the people we're close to, our bodies also rely on them to regulate our immune system, hormonal system, and nervous system. We evolved as social creatures, to be deeply connected to the people around us. This means that when someone is suddenly missing from our physical space, our bodies have to adjust along with all the other parts of us. And this takes time.

Grieving is a very sacred process, and an essential aspect of life. But it’s possible for this process to get short-circuited, and for us to get stuck in our grief. Deep loss will forever change us, and we will always remember those we’ve lost with sadness and love, but the process of grief is not meant to last forever.

We are meant to move through our grief, and eventually out the other side. So how do we do this?

Let’s look at the 5 stages of grief as our guide.

The 5 stages of grief, as identified by Elizabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler, are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. While no two people experience loss in the same way, we all will experience any or all of these stages as part of the process of moving through grief.

Understanding these stages is useful because they help us to understand what’s happening, and they also show us where we can get stuck in the grieving process.

The first stage of grief, denial, includes the period of shock we go through early on (especially when experiencing a sudden loss), where we just aren't quite ready to accept the reality of what's happened. This stage can show up like a mental block, where we act as if it hasn't happened, and can't even bring ourselves to admit that they're really gone.

Even though this denial of reality can seem crazy from an outside perspective, there is wisdom in it. This stage prevents the full impact of grief from hitting us, giving us the time we need to adjust enough to be able to handle its weight. This is a brilliant coping strategy.

As reality starts to sink in, the next stage that people often go through is anger. This can show up as anger at the person who died, finding someone to blame for what happened, or even being angry at God for allowing it to happen. The targets vary, but the purpose of this stage is the same.

Anger as an emotion gives us a lot of strength. It feels empowering, so it’s the perfect antidote to the helplessness that we feel when we've lost someone and there's nothing we can do about it. Anger helps us feel more in control…even when we really aren’t.

The bargaining stage is when we go over and over what happened in our minds, trying to rationalize what happened and make sense of it. It's a process of trying to understand why, of asking "what if..." and "if only…”, and thinking of all the other things that could have happened instead.

This is where survivor's guilt comes in, where people blame themselves for what happened. This self-blame is also a way of regaining a sense of control, and dealing with the helplessness of loss.

The 4th stage, depression, is when we become fully immersed in the emotion of grief itself. Grief in its pure form is extremely heavy and immobilizing. It pulls us out of normal space and time and can put our life on hold by taking away our motivation and energy to do everyday things - just like depression.

Grief brings life to a standstill in order to give us time to heal. We might spend a lot of time remembering, but we're not stuck reliving the moment of the loss (and the reasons for the loss) the way we are in the bargaining stage. We're fully dealing with the reality of it, and coming to terms with it so we can move on to final stage, acceptance.

I think of stage 5, acceptance, not so much as a stage of grief, but as the place we get to once we've moved through grief. The loss will always be with us, but we're beginning to live again, to move forward now that we've adjusted to the new, forever-changed reality. We might still feel sad, but the heavy lifting of the grieving process is done.

Whatever our own grief journey looks like, it's vital that we make it through the 4th stage fully, and into the 5th stage.

The only way we can move on with our life is for grief to run its course, and the only way that will happen is if we feel it fully. Grief doesn't just go away when it isn't felt... it stays until we surrender to it, and allow it to fully move through us.

The old adage that "time heals all wounds" is 100% wrong. It is entirely possible to never have fully grieved - and therefore be immersed in the pain of the loss - for our entire lives. And not only is this possible, I believe it happens as often as not. (Modern society is not very good with grief!)

The only way to move past the pain of grief is to fully go through it. Avoiding it will work temporarily (that’s what the denial stage is all about, after all), but it never works in the long run.

Moving through grief means being in stage 4 for as long as it takes, giving the time and space for mourning to happen. Grief dictates the timing, not us. We might find that it recedes for a little while, allowing us to continue with our lives almost normally, and then swoops back in to bring us to our knees again. Grief is not a linear process, and all we can do is flow with it.

If we get stuck in any stage of the process, or if the demands of life pulled us out of it and we didn't have the space and time to really allow it to flow, our grief will remain within us. And grief held inside will hold us back from truly living - dampening our joy and passion for life - potentially for the rest of our lives if we aren't willing to address it.

Grief is a very powerful and sacred emotion, and it's essential to feel it in order to be able to live well. Grief is what cleanses and heals our heart when it gets broken by loss. Without it, our heart won't ever heal, and we won't ever be able to fully move forward in life.

If grief sits inside us, unacknowledged and unfelt, it will start to become toxic - weighing down our heart like a heavy stone sitting on top of it. And with every loss we experience, we add another stone if we don't fully grieve.

Unfortunately, we can get stuck in any of the first 4 stages of grief.

If we're stuck in the 4th stage (depression), we won't be able to feel happy or fully enjoy life, and our energy and passion will be blocked. I believe that people who still cry every day and can't stop constantly thinking about their lost loved one years after they've been gone, are probably stuck in this stage.

Being stuck in any of the first 3 stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining) might not feel as painful, but it can be trickier because it’s harder to tell what’s going on. In those stages, may not even be aware that we have more grieving to do.

Being stuck in stage 1 makes us numb, cutting us off from sadness, grief, and all our emotions to some degree. This can feel like moving on (like the acceptance stage), except that it happens too quick. The key sign of this is avoiding thinking about the person who died. This is what happens in families that "cover up" the loss, never speaking about what happened or the person at all - as if they never even existed.

Another way we stay stuck in the denial stage is by keeping ourselves busy, or staying "happy" all the time and never allowing ourselves to slow down or feel sad. Basically, we're denying what happened by distracting ourselves from that we never have to experience the pain of stage 4.

These distractions (and stage 1 in general) aren't inherently bad. They allow us to postpone the heavy lifting of grief until we're ready to bear it, and they give us time to adjust and prepare ourselves.

But as with all the stages, where it becomes a problem is when it becomes a habit, our new "normal". Anxiety is the emotion that gives us energy and drive and helps us stay high-functioning, so having a habit of staying busy often leads to a state of chronic anxiety - where we rely on that emotion too much, to the point where it starts to become a problem. (For more about anxiety, check out my article From Enemy to Ally: How Anxiety Is Meant To Serve You).

Getting stuck in the anger stage of grief can be quite unpleasant, because while grief on its own is relaxing and immobilizing (like depression!), grief mixed with anger feels tense, more like despair and anguish. The unpleasantness of this feeling can also cause people to get stuck by pushing them back into stage 1, causing them to numb out because it just feels too painful to bear.

The only way to truly move past the pain of anguish (rather than avoiding it by moving back to stage 1) is to move as quickly as possible into stage 4. This means letting go of our resistance to what happened, and surrendering to what is. This can feel like accepting defeat, but it's a perfect example of how surrender and defeat can be more helpful than continuing to fight a lost cause.

The other characteristic of being stuck in the anger stage is holding onto resentment, feeling bitter about the past and being stuck in blame - unable to forgive or move on.

Letting go of resentment takes more than simple choice, although that’s the first step; it requires listening to our anger and taking whatever actions are still needed for our anger to resolve itself. This can mean letting someone know how we feel, or setting a boundary that needs to be respected. We can only truly move on when we first honor our anger - then forgiveness and letting go becomes easy.

Being stuck in the bargaining stage can be similar, also stuck in the past but feeling guilt instead of resentment, and blaming ourselves instead of blaming others. Remorse comes from wishing that things would have been different, and that can also keep us frozen in the past and unable to move forward.

The keys to moving on from this stage are surrendering to what is (as described above), while also having compassion for ourselves. Letting go of self-blame may require changing our beliefs about what we should have done (or could have done), so that we can change the story we are telling ourselves.

The first 3 stages are all ways of delaying the true work of grieving that happens in stage 4.

This delay can be important, giving us time to become strong enough for the grieving we need to do, but we don't need to experience all of the first 3 stages to move through our grief. In fact, the quicker we can move through them (while honoring our own timing), the better.

But stage 4 is a different story. It has its own timing, and we must surrender to it - and stay with it as long as it demands - if we are to make it through to the final stage of acceptance.

There's no way to skip this stage of we want to truly move out the other side of grief and be free of its weight. Anyone who claims that you can “release” grief through energy healing, spiritual cleansing , or any other method that doesn't actually involve feeling the grief, is sadly mistaken. That's just not how grief works.

But there are ways to work with grief intelligently, that help speed the process along and create boundaries around it so it doesn't overwhelm us or derail our entire life. The process of grieving doesn't have to take years - and the biggest factor that determines how quickly we can (authentically) move through stage 4 is how deeply we're willing to feel our grief, to dive into it and surrender to it.

Much of this is determined by our courage and willingness to feel the pain of loss, and flow with the process no matter what. And this becomes so much easier if we trust ourselves and the innate wisdom in our grief, and trust that we are strong enough to bear whatever comes.

Other than this, the greatest tool we have to help us grieve well is the power of ritual. You don't have to be a spiritual person to use ritual - it can be as spiritual or as secular as you want it to be.

Ritual is all about intention, and giving intention added power by making it physical and tangible. It’s also about creating a sacred container for the work of grieving, as a way of honoring that work as sacred and keeping it contained. This amplifies its effects, but in a safe way, by separating the grieving process from ordinary life.

This article is already too long to go into detail about how to use ritual in this way, but I will be writing about this topic soon. So if you’d like more guidance in how to do this, you can sign up for The Unlocked Heart’s email newsletter here, to be the first to hear about the article when it comes out.

May you be fully supported in your grief, so you can grieve your losses well.

The Anatomy of Grief: How to Grieve Well
How to Escape the Co-dependency TrapEmotion SkillsJessica MooreTue, 04 Dec 2018 09:52:30 +0000 is so common in our society that it’s considered to be normal. But in this case, normal is not healthy! Co-dependency is the result of serious boundary impairment - which means it inevitably causes conflict and dysfunction. Find out why this happens, and how to change it.The winter holiday season is a time of showing our loved ones that we care, with gifts, elaborate meals, and simply spending time together. But as much as we love our families, getting everyone together inevitably means revisiting all of the family dynamics we experienced in childhood. Yikes!

Co-dependency is one of the most common dysfunctional family patterns, and it can be the hardest to step out of. Even when it seems like we’ve succeeded, when we’re back in the family soup we grew up in, we can find ourselves right back where we started. Or at least that’s what it can feel like!

So let’s explore what’s really going on with co-dependency, and how to hold our ground in the face of it - in a loving and non-confrontational way.

Before we go any further, let me be clear: true independence is a myth.

In the closed biosphere of this planet, everything I do and everything you do impacts everything else, in tiny ways and not-so-tiny ways. You’ve heard of the butterfly effect? In truth, every action we take ripples out, in ways we can’t even imagine.

And as a social species, we’re all dependent on each other. None of us could exist if we were entirely alone. Not only are our brains and our bodies wired for connection (so we need other people to stay healthy and sane), but we also depend on other people for our survival in countless ways. How many of you fix your own plumbing, or manufacture the products you use every day?

But with all that said, co-dependency is not the same as the kind of healthy inter-dependence that has made humanity so successful as a species. (Ok, it’s arguable how successful we really are, but you get my point!)

What makes people co-dependent, as opposed to inter-dependent, is a lack of healthy boundaries in the relationship.

To illustrate this, think of the cells in your body. They all work together to support the health of the whole, but each of them maintains clear boundaries with every other cell. If their cell membranes lost integrity, the cell contents would leak everywhere and they would cease to function. We’d die!

When two people don’t have clear boundaries, their boundaries tend to mush together, and become enmeshed. Because of this, they lose their own healthy sense of self; there’s no clear sense of “this is me,” “this is what I want,” or “this is what I feel about that.” It’s as if both people have become one person.

Without clear boundaries, it becomes really hard for each person to advocate for and meet their own needs - because they won’t even know what their needs actually are. Each person’s wants and needs have now become entangled with the other person’s, creating massive confusion.

And co-dependency takes this lack of boundaries a step further. Not only would I be confused about what I’m actually wanting or needing in any given situation, I wouldn’t even understand that it’s up to me to advocate for my own needs. Instead, I’d outsource them onto you, assuming that it’s your responsibility to take care of me (and vice versa).

But here’s the kicker. I can’t know what your needs are if you don’t tell me - and you can’t tell me if you don’t know what they are either! So both of us would just have to guess, and hope for the best.

And if I get it wrong? Then you get upset because your needs aren’t being met. Because even if you don’t know what your needs are, your anger does! (Because that’s anger’s job). We’ll explore the implications of this in a minute.

There’s only one kind of relationship where boundary enmeshment is healthy, and that’s the relationship between parents and children.

When children are young, they don’t have any functional boundaries of their own. (When they’re babies, they don’t even know they’re a separate person from anyone else!)

In the parent-child relationship, the parents assume responsibility for all of the child’s needs - anticipating them as best they can. This is how it should be, because children are truly dependent, in every sense of the word.

Co-dependency among adults is another story entirely. This is fundamentally unhealthy, because the mother-child merging of boundaries is not meant to extend beyond childhood. Around the age of 5 or 6, children should begin to develop boundaries of their own - and it’s vital that parents encourage and support that.

At its core, the process of becoming an adult is all about taking responsibility for one’s own needs, and releasing one’s parents from that responsibility.

But what happens if the child grows up, but never becomes a functional adult?

Young people can move out of their parents’ house and start supporting themselves financially, but doesn’t necessarily mean they truly “grow up.” It’s entirely possible to for them take care of themselves on a material level, and still continue to seek love, approval, and validation from other people - just as they needed from their parents when they were a child.

They’ve merely transferred the responsibility for meeting their emotional needs from their parents onto others, whether that’s a best friend or a significant other. They still aren’t showing up for themselves as the adult, the parent who loves and validates them; they’re still expecting it to come from other people.

And what happens when this person then has children of their own? Subconsciously, they will end up relying on their children to meet their emotional needs, in addition to (or instead of) the other way around. And in this way, co-dependency is born - and passed on through the generations.

Co-dependency has become so normalized in our culture that it’s actually considered to be the way our relationships are meant to be. This is a serious cultural problem, and the only way this will change is if we refuse to accept responsibility for the needs of others, and stop expecting other people to take care of ours.

So how can we tell if we’re falling into the co-dependency trap?

This is an important question, because it’s not like relationships have a label that clearly marks them “healthy” or “co-dependent.” Co-dependent tendencies and behaviors can pop up anywhere, even in relationships that are normally healthy.

The biggest red flag is when someone chooses not to speak up for what they want in a situation (and yet they clearly care what happens). Instead, they just expect the other person - or people - to know, and get annoyed if they don’t.

When people do this, they’re expecting others to anticipate their wants and needs, so that they’re absolved of the responsibility of speaking up for what they want. Unless, of course, the need isn’t met (and they get annoyed). Then you’ll probably hear all about it!

This expectation is enshrined in many cultures as how people - especially women - should act toward those they care about.

My mom and I have a generally healthy relationship, but it drives me crazy when she tries to get me to do the co-dependent behaviors that she was taught by her parents. (Luckily, this doesn’t happen too often!)

Here’s an example: imagine that you’re sitting around a table with your family, eating dinner. All the dishes have already been passed around, so now it’s time for seconds. You want more salad, and it’s next to you, so you grab the salad bowl and serve yourself some more.

This is what my mom would do. She would tell me to pass the salad around the table, forcing everyone else eating to stop what they were doing and pass it on by if they didn’t want any more. Sure, it’s a small thing, but by doing so she made it my responsibility to ensure that everyone else got all the salad they wanted - as if they weren’t capable of asking me to pass it over if they wanted some.

She was taught that if you don’t do that, you’re being impolite. But it always felt “off” to me, as if I was projecting my own desire for more salad onto others, and pushing salad on people who didn’t want it.

And I got to wondering, why are they somehow incapable of asking me to pass the salad on over if they want some? Why is it my responsibility to anticipate their desire for seconds, instead of it being their responsibility to communicate that? You can see the problem here.

If you’re working to step out of co-dependent patterns and embody clearer boundaries, anger is your biggest ally.

Another hallmark of co-dependency is when people refuse to say what they want or need, and then get angry and end up blaming others for things not being how they want them to be.

As I mentioned earlier, anger’s job is to let us know where our boundaries are, by showing up as tension or irritation when our boundaries are crossed. If we aren’t willing or able to speak up for our boundaries, others won’t know where they are, so they’ll inevitably end up disrespecting them. Which will inevitably make us feel frustrated, irritated, annoyed, or straight-up angry!

Anger is the force that motivates us to assert ourselves and speak up for ourselves, by letting us know when something important to us is being disrespected or disregarded. Even if you have no idea where your boundaries are in a situation, your anger will know!

Look to it as your guide, by learning to pay attention to when it comes up (ideally when it’s soft and subtle). That will let you know where your boundary is - and when you should speak up for it.

Because here’s the thing about anger - the bigger the boundary violation, the louder anger gets. One inevitable result of co-dependency is bitterness, resentment, and a lot of anger, because no one is honoring their boundaries properly!

So the best way to get a handle on our anger, and be able to act on it calmly and wisely, is to learn to have healthy boundaries. And we do that by paying better attention to our anger, and acting on it when it’s still soft and quiet - before it starts to shout.

When you do this, you’ll find that there’s no need to argue or fight to set a boundary; all you need to do is calmly and firmly hold the line. But I understand that isn’t always easy - especially at first!

Co-dependency can feel like a trap, sucking you in even when you try to step out of it.

If you grew up in a family with co-dependent tendencies, you might find yourself falling into this dynamic without realizing it. Here are the three essential keys to getting out of it:

  1. knowing where your boundaries are (differentiating your wants and needs vs those of other people)

  2. honoring your own boundaries (by being willing to speak up for them and enforce them as needed), and

  3. refusing to take responsibility for anyone else’s wants and needs (you can meet them if you wish, but make sure it’s a choice, not a requirement).

If you’re wanting to shift a relationship to a healthier pattern, you can’t control other people… but you don’t need to! It’s amazing what happens when you simply refuse to play the game.

To do this, consider which of these 3 keys you tend to have the hardest time with. That’s where you need to focus your efforts on doing things differently.

But make no mistake, it’s not always easy to hold the line - especially when other people don’t like your new way of doing things! Expect push back, but know that if you cave, nothing will change. So stay strong and centered in yourself, and you’ll make your relationships healthier!

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In my next blog post I’ll be reviewing a book that I’ve found incredibly helpful in establishing clear boundaries in relationships - by communicating them in a healthy way. The book offers clear steps for how to speak up for your wants and needs without causing a fight, which I’ll share in the review.

If you don’t want to miss it, sign up for The Unlocked Heart’s email newsletter and you’ll hear about it as soon as it comes out. Until then, happy holidays!

How to Escape the Co-dependency Trap
We're More Connected Than Ever... So Why Do We Feel So Lonely?HealingJessica MooreWed, 21 Nov 2018 00:43:15 +0000 can have thousands of Facebook friends and still feel lonelier every day. Clearly quantity can't make up for quality, when it comes to connection. But as easy as it is to blame social media, the roots of loneliness go much deeper - and so too does the cure.We live in a world with more people on earth than any time in history, with technology that allows us to talk with people anywhere in the world (and even see their faces while we do it!), and yet we feel lonelier and more disconnected than ever before.

Why is that?

Loneliness is akin to sadness or depression, but it contains a unique sense of longing.

In loneliness, there’s a sense that something important is missing from our lives, that a fundamental need in our lives isn’t being met. It can arise when we feel alone or isolated, when we don’t feel heard or seen by others.

And yet, if this was as straightforward as needing more human connection, then why is it that lonely people still feel lonely in a crowd?

While some lonely people don’t have any close friends, many others do. The common solution of “go out and spend time with people” may bring temporary relief, but the loneliness usually returns soon after. Clearly there’s something more going on here.

One of the things I feel is going on is that loneliness isn’t just about connection, but it’s also about intimacy, and belonging. Perhaps it’s not so much about how well-connected we are (or how many friends we have on Facebook), but about the quality and depth of the connections in our lives.

Modern society just doesn’t allow for the deep social connections that are at the core of what it means to be human.

To put this in perspective, imagine that you lived 10,000 years ago.

The majority of your life would be spent with a small group of people, and all of you would know each other intimately. You’d be present at every birth, every death, every major life event in every person’s lives. Every single person in your community would be family.

That sense of belonging, of truly knowing others on such a deep, intimate level, is something people had in their lives for the vast majority of human existence.

This is a fundamental part of being human, and it just doesn’t exist for us today. Not having this is the psychic equivalent of missing a limb.

We might have some close friends, but the demands of modern life usually mean that we only see them a couple times a week (if we’re lucky!). We might feel close to our family members, but how many of them are a part of our everyday lives? How many of them even live in the same city?

It makes perfect sense why loneliness is so prevalent for us in today’s world.

And yet, I still don’t think this entirely explains the loneliness we feel.

Have you ever tried to reach out to someone and connect on a deep level, but they seem to have a wall up? For many lonely people, they want connection but there’s something inside that just doesn’t let it in, even when it’s offered.

Most of us carry a block within us to the depth of intimacy and connection we truly need, because intimacy requires vulnerability. And vulnerability is scary!

Even when we embrace vulnerability and do our best to embody it, there’s still something inherently scary about it - because by definition, we aren’t protected. We’re exposing ourselves to the possibility of being hurt.

It’s just not possible to protect ourselves from being hurt and be vulnerable too. And the less used to it we are, the scarier it feels.

Not only did none of us grow up with the kind of intimacy that our ancestors would have experienced with everyone in their lives, many of us didn’t grow up in safe environments. So many children experience trauma and abuse, or grow up in emotionally-harsh environments where vulnerability is clearly not safe.

Even many normal methods of parenting (like telling kids to cheer up because “it’s not that bad” or “it’s not a big deal”) cause us to shut down, teaching us the lesson that it isn’t safe to bare our hearts. Boys and men also experience a massive cultural expectation to not be vulnerable, otherwise they’re not considered “a real man.”

And our society isn’t exactly safe for us as adults, either. We’re not surrounded by people who we’ve grown up with, who we know have our back and will be there for us no matter what. There are many people out there who will take advantage of our vulnerability if they can.

Many of us have an intuitive wariness toward other people, because it takes time to know who we can trust. This isn’t paranoia, it’s emotional intelligence.

So it makes perfect sense why vulnerability is uncomfortable for us.

And this doesn’t only cut us off from other people, but it disconnects us from ourselves as well. The more we learn it isn’t safe to feel our true feelings, the more we close ourselves off from what we’re feeling altogether.

All the ways that we’re taught to control our emotions - to repress anger, deny fear, or cheer up when we’re sad - just feed into this. Because in order to override our emotions, we have to suppress them, and in order to suppress them we have to shut down.

Add to this the fact that the demands of modern life continually pull us outward, and how little our society values solitude and going within, and we’re left with a huge lack of intimacy with ourselves as well as with other people.

Even when we do our best to relate from the heart, most of the time we’re still focusing outward. We may value connection with other people and do our best to deepen those connections, but it’s so easy to forget about connecting with ourselves.

I believe this is truly what’s at the root of loneliness, because we can only show up and be present with others to the depth that we’re willing and able to be present with ourselves.

What’s inside reflects what’s outside, and vice versa.

When we feel lonely for belonging, connection, and intimacy, ultimately the solution is to meet those needs for ourselves.

Trying to find them outside of us just won’t work to get those needs met, and it won’t get rid of loneliness. Our loneliness isn’t just about other people - it’s revealing the deep, core wounds we’re carrying that still need to be healed.

Only when we meet those true needs for ourselves - by being the person who makes the wounded part of us feel heard, validated, and loved - can we ever truly feel love and belonging out in the world. It just doesn’t work the other way around, no matter how hard we try to make it so.

Here’s another way to look at it. As long as our inner child still feels that it’s not safe to open up, be vulnerable with people, or be intimate with others, then we’ll continue to have a hard time creating those kinds of relationships and experiences with other people.

And as a result, we’ll continue to feel a lack of that true connection and belonging, and we’ll continue to feel lonely and unloved.

But once we help our inner child to feel safe, by showing them that we’ll always be there to validate them and protect them, no matter what, then we’ll no longer feel that inner resistance to creating the depth of relationships that our hearts truly desire.

So if loneliness is something you suffer from, I have some suggestions for you.

First, try to commit to spending a little time each day checking in with your feelings. Even if it’s just a few minutes, take time out from your life to go within, to notice what your body and your emotions are wanting to say to you.

Explore your inner landscape (the felt space within your body), and learn to be with whatever you find within you. Be curious, and relate to them as little “selves” within you. Empathize with them, talk to them, and feel into their fears, their desires, their needs.

For example, you might find a part of you that feels frustrated about a situation in your life, and another part of you that feels scared and worried about it. There might be a part of you that is really needing your love, even if they’re angry with you. Why are they angry?

Learn to be a compassionate witness to all the parts of yourself, no matter how they show up and no matter what they’re wanting or feeling. It’s all valid, and it all needs your empathy and love.

And if you have the skills, I encourage you to take this one step further.

As the compassionate witness, once you’ve explored what’s within you and why it’s feeling that way, then the next step would be to track that feeling back to where it’s rooted in your past - back to the very first time you felt that way. Then find out what that “little you” needed in that time and provide it, whatever that is, so that the wounded part of you feels whole and happy once again.

In my experience this is the most profound and effective way to meet our true needs for love, validation and belonging.

And it’s so important, because as long as those wounds remain unhealed, life will continue to reactivate them and make us feel the same way, over and over again, for the rest of our lives if we don’t do something about it. You could say that life conspires with our soul to bring us precisely what triggers us, so that we can rediscover what needs healing and bring that healing to ourselves.

Once we become aware of what’s happening, our triggers can become gifts, and opportunities to heal. If you’d like to find out more about how all this works, I explain more in this video.

And if you’d like to see how this kind of healing works firsthand, you can watch this video where I walk my lovely partner through a real, live healing.

And, finally, if this resonates with you and you want one-on-one support in doing this kind of healing work yourself, that’s my specialty! You can schedule a free session with me here to find out more.

May we all feel connection and love, both from within and without.

How to Stop Worrying and Overthinking [When It's Just Too Much]AnxietyEmotion SkillsJessica MooreTue, 02 Oct 2018 05:23:00 +0000 anxiety too much, too often, can create a self-reinforcing feedback loop of constant worry and negative thinking. It's not an easy cycle to get out of, but there's hope! With the right strategies, we can succeed in changing our thinking and even get out of heads altogether.Anxiety freaks out about all the ways things could go wrong for a benevolent reason - it wants to keep us safe. When anxiety is in balance, this focus on the future is extremely useful, and it’s how we’re able to live a high-functioning life.

But when we feel anxiety too much, it can create a nasty feedback loop that keeps us trapped in our heads, thinking and worrying about “what if…, what if…, what if…”

The more we worry about what could happen (in the future), the less aware we are of the present, so the less grounded we are. And as I’ve talked about here, the less grounded we are, the less safe we feel - which causes us to dissociate and worry even more. And on and on it goes.

Let me break this down a bit more, so we can figure out a way out of this trap.

When we don’t feel safe, one of our innate survival strategies is to dissociate.

Dissociation is a way of leaving our body by taking our awareness, our consciousness, somewhere else. This is part of the “freeze” aspect of the panic response, a survival instinct in times of trauma to stop us from being aware of what's happening to us. It’s a way of numbing out, of not really feeling the pain of trauma.

Dissociation is an evolutionary adaptation created by nature to minimize suffering.

This can be as extreme as fainting (losing consciousness completely), or "playing dead" as many animals do, but for us it's even more common to experience this as simply sending our awareness away. Some trauma survivors talk about watching what was happening from outside themselves - as if it was happening to someone else.

Anxiety taps into this survival strategy by getting us to focus on the future, and to utilize our incredible human brainpower to anticipate what might happen… all to keep us safe. When anxiety is involved, dissociation leads to worry and mental stress.

If we continually don’t feel safe over an extended period of time, we can learn to stay dissociated as a normal way of being.

If we dissociate and go “up in our heads” too often, we can easily get stuck in a pattern of thinking about potential problems over and over, endlessly.

Not only does this provide fuel for more anxiety, but it can become a “rut” that our thoughts fall into whenever we feel anxious about things. In this way it becomes a self-reinforcing cycle, where the anxiety triggers the worrying, which creates more anxiety… and so on.

Because of the way the brain lays down neural pathways and reinforces them with use, anxiety can become a mental habit.

This can feel like a trap with no way out, because of how automatically our thoughts fall back into the same old pattern. It’s not easy to step out of it, but luckily for us, it is possible. The brain is plastic and changeable by nature, so whenever it’s used in a different way, new neural pathways are formed.

The challenge with changing our habitual thought patterns is that it requires a certain amount of mental discipline. This is where meditation and other mindfulness practices really come in handy, because they help us cultivate this discipline and control over the mind.

The very first step is gaining distance from our thoughts, because only then can we choose where our attention will go.

This means learning to be a compassionate (and dispassionate) witness, a curious observer to our thoughts and feelings, rather than being them.

Many of our thoughts originate in the subconscious, so we can't choose to think them… we just do. But can choose whether to indulge in them and go wherever they lead, or to shift our focus on something different.

One way to redirect our focus is by thinking the opposite thing. This is a way of reframing our "what if (this horrible thing happens)" thoughts into "what if (this awesome thing were to happen)?" It's essentially a way of training the brain to create new neural pathways that support a more optimistic outlook, rather than an anxiety-making outlook.

Positive affirmations can be a useful tool here... if you use them in the right way.

Affirmations can be problematic if what we're affirming is the opposite of our actual experience (like saying "I am full of joy" when we're actually anxious and depressed). Stating the opposite of our experience as if it was true is a way of lying to ourselves - and the more we do that, the more we erode our connection to the truth, and our ability to feel our resonance with the truth. We'd essentially be training ourselves to feel lies as the truth.

But we can avoid this problem if we word our affirmations the right way. This means making them statements of intention (affirming our choices and actions), and wording them as something ongoing (as a goal that we're moving towards rather than a current reality).

An example of this would be: "I am moving towards greater health and well-being." If you’re working to create healthier thought patterns, this would be entirely true!

One additional caution with thinking positive thoughts about the future, is that you’re still thinking about the future (which is still thinking). So even though you’re not worrying (which is good), this still won't help you get grounded and out of your head. Also, it's important not to fight with yourself, so if an internal argument starts to happen, it's a good idea to shift strategies.

Another way to shift your focus away from anxiety thinking is to put your attention onto something else entirely. Ideally this would be something that gets you out of your head and brings you back to the present moment.

Here’s one excellent way to do this. First, find 5 things you can see around you. Second, find 4 things you can touch near you. Then find 3 things you can hear, 2 things you can smell, and 1 thing you can taste. This is a simple meditation that gets you in your body and stops you from thinking altogether, by shifting your focus to your physical senses.

Another meditation I find very helpful is spending time with each of my physical senses, simply noticing what’s there. I like to do this for as long as I need to, until I feel nicely calm and centered.

While meditations like this can be done anywhere (one of their many benefits), I personally prefer doing them outside, especially somewhere in nature. It’s so much richer for the senses outside, whereas in the sterile, indoor environment it’s easier for the mind to get bored and wander off into thinking again.

The key to stop worrying and overthinking is grounding - getting out of our heads, and back into our bodies.

Dissociation is an expression of an activated nervous system - as all the fear emotions (like panic and anxiety) are. Getting grounded does the opposite - it calms the nervous system and releases stress. Grounding truly is the antidote to anxiety.

This is why I believe that mindful movement is the best tool to train the mind to stop thinking and become more present. Not only does focusing on movement redirect our awareness to the present moment, but it’s also extra grounding because of how it gets our body moving, and brings our awareness to how the body feels.

My favorite forms of mindful movement are yoga, qi gong, and free-form dancing. Yoga and qi gong are both very good for cultivating mental discipline along with bringing awareness to the body. When I do these, at the end of a session I always feel very quiet in my mind, hardly thinking at all. It’s such a relief!

I include dancing in this short list because of how it helps me ground not only into my body, but also into my emotions. I like to play very dramatic music that moves me emotionally, and then let my feelings express themselves freely in the dance. I especially love to do this alone, when I can really let my emotions and creativity flow.

If your favorite movement practice is something different, like bicycling, running, or hiking, that’s great too! You can make any form of exercise benefit you in this way by doing it mindfully: focusing on your breath, on how your body feels, and on the environment around you.

I love hiking by myself, so I can turn the hike into a meditation of awareness on everything around me. I also train in self-defense, and I’ve found that there's nothing that gets you in the now as quickly as having to defend yourself from getting punched in the face!

So if you find yourself worrying and thinking too much, think about what practices you can bring into your life to calm and refocus your mind. You have the power to change your mental habits to be whatever you want them to be - it just takes time, dedication, and practice.

And with that said, if you’ve been doing your best to do this and you’re still struggling, there might be other hidden factors working against you, fueling anxiety without you realizing it. I’ve created a free, 12-page DIY Guide to Calming Anxiety to help you discover what those hidden factors might be, and to provide you with strategies for addressing them. You can grab it here!

If your mind is a turbulent ocean, may you sail through the waves into the still water beyond.

Do You Need To Feel Shame And Anger?AngerShameJessica MooreSun, 16 Sep 2018 04:27:00 +0000 and shame are often vilified, and not without reason. But as challenging as they can be, when we refuse to feel them things get even worse. While toxic anger and shame are seriously problematic, healthy anger and shame are essential to a healthy life.Anger and shame can both be difficult emotions to feel. I get that. But the consequences of not feeling them can be even worse.

If you’ve ever experienced or witnessed an abusive relationship (heaven forbid), you know that one of the things abusers do is to blame their partners for everything - even though the abuser is the one causing the harm. And far too often, both people involved believe this twisted version of reality to be true!

What causes people to do that?

There are many factors that contribute to abusive relationship dynamics, but what enables both people to believe that blame lies with the victim is a severe imbalance of shame and anger.

The abuser is able to always feel right (and justified) no matter what they do, because they don’t feel any shame. They actually feel like the victim! And because of this they feel justified in being angry, all the time. Directing anger at their partner is how they transfer the blame, not only ensuring that their partner accepts the blame, but also ensuring that their partner won’t ever retaliate with anger of their own.

Anger is only allowed to be felt by the abuser, while shame is only allowed to be felt by the victim. And as long as they both continue to exile the other emotion within themselves, this dynamic will stay in place.

I believe that these toxic relationships hold a warning for us all.

Not just to never get in that kind of relationship, because even though that’s sage advice, it’s never that easy. Rather, the real warning is about what happens when we exile shame, or exile anger - because when we do that, toxicity and abuse is almost inevitable.

Think about this for a moment. Exiling shame (and exaggerating anger in its place) not only enables someone to become an abuser, it almost compels them to be. They truly feel justified. And exiling anger (and exaggerating shame instead) is what makes victims feel unwilling (and unable) to leave.

What this should tell us is that we each need shame and anger, in healthy amounts, in order to be healthy people and able to relate with others in a healthy way. Our goal should be the same as Goldilocks when she broke into the bears’ house: seeking not too much, not too little, but just the right amount.

When we’re able to feel healthy shame and anger when they’re needed (and appropriate), they will balance each other and keep each other in check. Shame will make sure that we express anger in respectful ways, and anger will make sure we don’t accept blame for anything that isn’t our fault.

Just like the cosmic forces of Yin and Yang, these two emotions work together to moderate our ego and keep it healthy.

If you think of the ego as a bad thing, as something to be gotten rid of, then this won't make any sense. But if you think of the ego in psychological terms, it is simply our self-identity - for example, what I would identify with and consider to be “Jessica.”

Our ego, in this sense, is essential for us to function in the world. It is how I know who I am as a different person from you. Without the ego it would be impossible to negotiate boundaries, to be able to distinguish my feelings and desires from yours. Truly, the ego is essential to our ability to relate with one another.

The real question is, how healthy is our ego?

An excessive ego is one that is too self-centered (that believes they’re the center of the universe and only their experience matters), and believes that they can do no wrong. A deficient ego, on the other hand, is one that always focuses on other people (as being more important), and believes that everything is their fault.

The function of shame is to keep the ego in check, which has a feeling of contraction. This is why shame causes us to hang our head, and why embarrassment makes us want to hide. That pulling inward is the feeling of humility - which is healthy when it is warranted.

(If you’re wondering about the difference between healthy and toxic shame, I talk more about that here.)

Conversely, anger is all about defending and affirming our sense of self, and pushing our boundaries out when they’ve been encroached upon. This feels like the opposite of shame, and it has the opposite effect: strengthening our ego and making us feel bigger and more empowered.

So what happens if we feel one of these emotions too much, and the other too little?

As you may have guessed… mayhem.

If we feel too much anger and not enough shame, we’d probably end up trampling over other people's boundaries, and being disrespectful without even realizing it. We would also end up with a over-inflated sense of self, an ego that’s too big for it’s britches.

On the other hand, if we felt too much shame, and not enough anger, you can imagine what that would do to our confidence and self-esteem. (You might even know this from personal experience!) Low self-esteem and a lack of self-confidence are classic signs of a diminished ego - an ego that has contracted too much from too much shame.

And without healthy anger to keep us safe and empowered, we’d constantly be taking responsibility for stuff that wasn’t actually ours, and people would end up crossing our boundaries and taking advantage of us.

We want to have free access to both anger and shame, so that they can both come forward as needed in each moment.

When both of these emotions are operating within us as they should be, they will work together to keep the ego healthy and balanced, and to balance each other out - so that neither goes to toxic extremes.

This is easier than it sounds, because we don’t have to feel bad about ourselves to access the gifts of shame, or feel angry at someone to access the gifts of anger.

Like all the emotions we feel every day, shame and anger are constantly running in the background in their soft states. The more sensitive we are to these emotions, the less they have to shout at us, so the less we have to feel them in an obvious way.

One of the wonderful things about paying attention to our emotions, is that we can gain their wisdom and act on them intelligently without having to feel them very strongly at all! At least most of the time. And when they do get loud and show up intensely, there’s always a good reason - and often it’s because we didn’t receive the message early enough.

So how can we find balance in ourselves?

With all aspects of the human personality, each of us has a happy place on every spectrum - a tendency to hang out in a certain spot. So the direction that we need to move towards to achieve balance, health, and well-being will be different for each of us.

When it comes to the ego spectrum (and issues around boundaries and relationships), the primary emotions to work with are anger and shame.

With regard to boundaries, our biggest ally will always be our emotion of anger. So being in touch with anger, even in its soft way, is vitally important. We don't have to be mad at someone, or visibly angry, to receive the gifts of anger - we simply have to connect with our inner strength, determination, and firmness.

If we often give up our boundaries, or self-sabotage for the sake of others, that means that we’re paying more attention to our shame (and perhaps also our fear) then we are to our anger. Choosing instead to pay attention to that soft anger, and honoring its voice by acting on it, will help us to stay firm in our boundaries even when our shame is telling us that we shouldn't.

Alternatively, if people tell us that we’re often rude or insensitive - even if we don’t mean to be - then it’s likely that we need to pay more attention to our (healthy) shame. And if we tend to get angry and defensive when people criticize our behavior, this is a clear sign that we need to welcome our shame in more often, and start listening to its soft voice more than our anger.

Most of the time we learned to suppress certain emotions and amplify others in childhood, for very good reasons. But it’s important to remember that we’re adults now, so now we have the ability to choose differently. And usually the need for that strategy is long gone, so it probably isn’t helpful to us now anyway.

Our past experiences really do set the tone for our emotional responses for the rest of our life, until we resolve them within ourselves. I share more about what it takes to do that here.

And if you feel stuck in a pattern of imbalance around anger and shame, and haven’t been able to shift it, schedule an Emotional Breakthrough session with me and I’ll help you figure out what’s standing in your way.

May your shame and anger create beauty with their dance!

Do You Need To Feel Shame And Anger?
3 Steps to Letting Go of Toxic ShameShameEmotion SkillsJessica MooreSun, 02 Sep 2018 01:18:00 +0000, toxic shame can feel overwhelming, just like a tidal wave threatening to wash you away. Here I share the 3 steps to take to save yourself from drowning - and transform your shame in the process!Shame can feel like the cruelest of emotions, like Cinderella’s stepmother and stepsisters combined. And sometimes it’s even worse, making us see ourselves not the way we see Cinderella, but the way her step-family did - as ugly and worthless.

Shame isn’t supposed to work that way, as I explain in this article about understanding the difference between healthy and toxic shame. But the reality is, when our shame gets activated beyond what is healthy for us, it can cause us to feel like the worst person in the world.

Whether our shame is telling us that we should be more successful, more attractive, more intelligent, or more compassionate, it all comes from trying to meet a standard that’s either impossible, or simply isn’t right for us. The bar we’re subconsciously setting for ourselves is simply far too high.

If you think of our emotions as programs, the shame program’s job is to hold us to our internal standards for how we want to act and who we want to be. And it always does its job, no matter what - which means that if our internal standards aren’t healthy for us, our shame won’t be healthy for us either.

Shame’s job is to make us feel bad about ourselves in order to motivate us to do better.

There are many legitimate reasons to not feel good about ourselves (like when we hurt someone’s feelings or don’t follow through with a commitment), and people who never feel bad about themselves end up with a dangerously inflated sense of self. (After all, isn’t that what makes people narcissistic?)

But if the idea of “better” that our shame is pushing us towards isn’t healthy - or even possible - then our shame will be making us feel bad about ourselves for no good reason at all.

So the key to getting our shame to become a healthy emotion, where it is working for us without damaging us, is to change our internal ideas about the kind of person we need to be.

Throughout our lives, we internalize many beliefs and ideas about who we need to be and how we need to act in the world, in order to become a good person (and to be lovable and worthy). Some of those ideas make sense, like being honest and trustworthy, to act with kindness and integrity, and so on. When shame holds us to those kinds of standards, it’s working properly.

But we also receive many messages from our culture, our family, and even our spirituality, that simply aren’t helpful. They may be straight up toxic, like “you have to be thin in order to be beautiful,” but they might simply be unrealistic, like the common belief that we need to forgive instead of feeling anger.

That one’s a toughy because it sounds wonderful on the surface. But because forgiveness isn’t a simple choice - and we feel anger for a reason - this idea sets us up for a constant struggle with our anger, and to feel shame when our anger wins.

To make sure that your shame is working well for you, and to transform the toxic shame that isn’t, follow these 3 steps:

#1) Identify the beliefs and ideas behind your feelings of shame.

This goes back to the idea of emotional mindfulness, and the ability to pause, go inward, and listen to what our emotions are saying. One way to work with shame in this way is to notice whenever it pops up throughout the day, and take a “time-out” from life to sense into what your shame is communicating.

Once you notice that you’re feeling shame, try to have a conversation with it rather than analyzing it from your head. It can help to relate to your shame feeling as a separate part of you, residing in your body. Connect to it and ask it to let you know what it’s really wanting you to do (or how it’s wanting you to be). What is it not happy with? What does it want to be different?

Let’s take an example of feeling shame come up while you’re at work. You notice it and check in with it, and it says you’re not working hard enough. At first you think it’s telling you that you’re lazy because you chose not to do a task your co-worker asked you to do, but as you sense into it more deeply, you realize that it’s wanting you to follow your co-worker’s example and stay late after work every day. Because your shame says that if you don’t, you’re a lazy worker!

It's especially important to notice the feelings of shame that seem mysterious, that pop up without any obvious cause. Our emotions often drive our actions and decisions in very subtle ways, so by doing this you’ll be bringing these emotional influences to light, giving you more conscious control over your life.

Whenever you discover a shame message (the idea or belief behind your shame) make sure to make a note of it. You can write it down in a journal that you keep with you, or simply put it in a note on your phone. This is important because while awareness is always the beginning, more work is needed to transform them!

#2) Identify which shame messages you want to keep, and which have got to go.

Once you’re aware of the messages driving your shame, then you suddenly have a choice that wasn’t there before. You can choose to keep them, if you feel they’re holding you to an honorable and healthy standard, or to discard them if they’re causing your shame to go overboard.

To identify which category a belief or idea should fall into, you can use the felt sense of your inner truth to discern which of them are reasonable and help you to be the kind of person you truly want to be. You can also feel into the impact they would have on your self-esteem and confidence.

Would they cause your shame to constantly beat you up, or would you only feel shame about failing once in a while? In other words, does this belief or idea create a healthy goal for you to try to live up to?

To illustrate this, let’s continue the example above. You’ve identified that your shame is wanting you to stay late after work, in order to be a diligent worker and not be lazy. Does this feel like a healthy thing for you to do consistently in your life? Does it feel fair (would you be paid overtime)? And even more fundamentally, does this belief that “not working overtime means that you’re lazy” feel true to you?

If not, then you’ve identified a toxic shame message that needs to be cleared out of your psyche. Anytime you do this, it’s good to clarify what the alternative belief is that you’d like to replace it with. Beliefs are the psychological equivalent of code that runs our operating system, so simply trying to delete them never works as well as replacing them with a different belief.

Sometimes toxic beliefs are obvious, but sometimes a belief might feel partially true, but need tweaking for it to be healthy. Let’s use the example of the idea that “a kind person is willing to help out a friend.”

This may be true in general, but if your shame is saying that you always have to be willing to help out, regardless of your own situation (and even if your friend is asking for too much), it would fall into the toxic camp because that’s not a healthy standard to uphold. But perhaps this belief would be healthy if it was just a bit more reasonable? If so, ask yourself what the reasonable alternative would be?

#3) Delete the toxic shame message, and replace that belief with a healthier one.

This step is simple, but also tricky. There exists many ways of clearing false beliefs, but not all of these work.

Now, if all that’s needed is to dismantle the toxic belief, many of them will work just fine. This can be as simple as listening the belief, letting it fully explain itself, and getting the full picture of it until you find the flaw in the logic (the place where it clearly isn't true). Once you’ve identified that flaw, then all you do is affirm the truth to yourself (really feeling it) until the belief simply vanishes, and you sense it’s no longer within you.

But if the shame message is rooted in a wound from our past, it will often take more than that simple process to clear it. This is where emotional healing comes in.

The kind of emotional healing that I do allows us to track whatever we’re working with back to where it’s rooted in the past, so that it can be healed there. We do that by giving ourselves whatever we needed (and didn’t receive) in that moment in time, so that our past no longer impacts our present.

One way to tell whether an emotional healing is necessary is if the simple method (above) just doesn’t seem to work - if you still feel the belief as true inside of you, despite your best efforts. This is where it’s important to be honest with ourselves, when we feel into whether it is cleared effectively or not.

Another way to tell if an emotional healing is needed is if working with the belief makes us feel like a child again. If we feel like a 6 year old, then something about that time of our life is probably involved!

If toxic shame is seriously beating you down, I encourage you to put these steps into practice. And if you do and you find yourself stuck in any step of the process - or simply needing more support - I offer complementary Emotional Breakthrough sessions, with the intention of giving you clarity about what you need to move forward and start seeing change in your life.

May your shame become the honorable ally it was truly meant to be!

3 Steps to Letting Go of Toxic Shame
Feeling Bad About Yourself? Understanding Toxic ShameShameJessica MooreWed, 15 Aug 2018 20:00:00 +0000 can be an incredible burden, making us feel not good enough no matter what we do. But shame is also the emotion that makes us honorable and kind, and motivates us to constantly improve ourselves. Here’s how shame is supposed to work, and what makes it go sideways.Does shame feel like a bully, constantly beating you up for no good reason?

Does it cause you to feel bad about yourself and make you feel like a failure? Does it disable your ability to stand up for yourself so that other people end up walking all over you?

For many of us, this is exactly how shame operates. But I would argue that this isn’t how shame should be, but rather shame gone bad.

Toxic shame crushes us and destroys our self-confidence, makes us feel small, not good enough, not worthy of love, success or anything. It can also cause us to take responsibility for what really isn't ours, to always feel that it's our fault if others are upset.

If we always find ourselves apologizing for things that we shouldn't be apologizing for, that means that our shame is effectively causing us to disable and disrespect our boundaries (which means that others will end up doing that too). Taking on this extra load, this extra burden, means that we end up walking around with the weight of the world on our shoulders.

That's not a sustainable situation, and it's not fair.

We should only ever have to take responsibility for what is truly our responsibility, and we all need healthy boundaries that are respected by others. The funny thing is, when shame is healthy it’s the precise emotion that lets us know when something truly is our responsibility, and it’s what motivates us to accept that responsibility.

Shame is almost universally considered to be an unhealthy thing to feel, but the problem with that belief is that no emotion is inherently unhealthy. Otherwise why would we have evolved to feel it in the first place?

It’s imperative that we make a distinction between toxic shame and healthy shame, because a lack of shame is just as toxic as too much shame. After all, shamelessness is a key characteristic of narcissism, and we don’t want to become that!

The alternative to toxic shame is not demonizing shame entirely and trying to never feel it again (which for most of us, wouldn’t work anyway), but transforming our shame back into the healthy and balanced emotion it was always meant to be.

But before we can do that, we have to understand why shame becomes toxic in the first place.

Usually we acquire toxic shame from messages that we internalize throughout our lives.

Even seemingly innocuous things that people say about us can have a lasting impact, like “you talk too much,” “you throw like a girl,” or “you look like a dork.” But when they are repeated, or when we’re repeatedly criticized (such as for not being considerate enough, or not being a good enough student), we can end up with lifelong complexes.

Religion can be really bad about this, making us feel like we're sinful or bad for any number of things - or even simply that we have a sinful nature, as if there's something inherently wrong with us. And these shaming messages come from our wider society too. Old school marketing is all about making us feel bad about ourselves as we are - making us believe that we lack something - so that we’ll buy things.

All of these sources conspire to make us feel shame about ourselves, in one way or another. And most often this occurs completely outside of our conscious awareness. Even when our conscious mind knows that these feelings are completely irrational, that does nothing to stop the feelings and thoughts that arise out of our subconscious as a result of those internalized messages.

This is why simply affirming something else usually isn't enough to reprogram toxic shame. Positive affirmations can be helpful to bolster us up and give us temporary relief (sometimes!), but that rarely lasts because the conscious mind has nowhere near the power of our subconscious. And as long as those messages remain firmly embedded in our operating system, they will continue to influence the way we think and feel about ourselves.

In the model of emotions that I'm licensed in, Dynamic Emotional Integration®, we call this inauthentic shame. Any shame that results from ideas we’ve taken on from other people - ideas that aren’t right and true for us - is inauthentic. In contrast, authentic shame holds us to internal standards of behavior that are healthy for us, and helps us to become the kind of person that we truly want to be (vs. what we feel others want us to be).

Authentic shame is what motivates us to be a good person.

It’s the emotion that drives us to be kind, to be responsible, to be considerate, to be a hard worker, and so on. In contrast, inauthentic shame motivates us to become anorexic, to over-work ourselves, to throw ourselves under the bus.

This happens because whether our shame is authentic or not, it will hold us to whatever ideas we have about ourselves - whether reasonable and positive, or damaging and completely unattainable. Shame does this by making us feel bad about ourselves whenever we don't live up to that internal standard.

Depending on the standard, this can be a good thing or a bad thing! If we never felt bad about ourselves when we’re truly at fault, we would never be motivated to recognize our guilt, say “I’m sorry,” or choose to make amends.

So healthy shame is all about getting us to be a good person in the world, to have a positive impact on the world, and to treat others with kindness and respect. It is the foundational emotion that makes our society work.

All those words that allow us to be in right relationship with other people, like “please,” “thank you,” and “I'm sorry” would not exist if we didn’t feel any shame at all. Which really shows what it means to be shameless: not being willing or able to take responsibility for anything, being completely self-centered and unreliable, and never apologizing for anything.

You may know someone in your life who is like this, who has a really hard time admitting that they’ve done something wrong, and who doesn’t seem to care (or even notice) when they’ve negatively impacted other people.

If someone isn't able to access their shame (because they’ve learned to avoid it or repress it), you probably can't rely on them, because they may or may not do what they say they're going to do. And whenever you try to hold them accountable, they refuse to own up to it.

It's as if the standard they're holding themselves to is so low - or doesn’t even exist - so they literally feel that they can do no wrong.

Shamelessness causes an over-inflated ego, and thinking so highly of yourself that you can never do any wrong. Healthy shame is what keeps the ego in check, and that's a good thing because if our ego gets too big for its britches we become insufferable and really hard to be around.

Shameless people can be toxic in relationships (even if they have wonderful intentions!), and they can even become dangerous. If a person feels entitled to take whatever they want, to do whatever they want, that’s a clear sign of a lack of healthy shame.

Sure, many people boost their ego really far out because they truly feel horrible about themselves inside. But rather than let themselves feel that shame, they protect themselves from it by going in the opposite direction, and cutting themselves off from their shame altogether. This is how someone with a fragile ego ends up coming across as arrogant and egoic.

But what happens when the standards we’ve set for ourselves (and that we’ve adopted from others) are too high, or simply unattainable?

Our shame will become too overbearing, constantly beating us over the head to achieve something that’s impossible no matter how hard we try. It will never let up (causing us to feel shame all the time, which isn’t fair or healthy for anyone), because the goal is never reached.

If the standard is reachable, but simply isn’t healthy, our shame will end up causing us to sacrifice too much of ourselves, to essentially damage ourselves in the pursuit of that goal. Even if we’re successful (and our shame goes away), the end result won’t be pretty.

One of the most damaging shame messages that we’re taught to internalize is the idea that we should always put others’ needs ahead of our own.

This idea sounds lovely on the surface, but when our shame is holding us to it, we will constantly feel an internal pressure to yield our boundaries to the demands of others - to help people out regardless of our own wants and needs, and to always put ourselves last. Women in particular are enculturated to do this, which is why so many women have difficulty maintaining healthy boundaries and balanced relationships.

Not only does shame make us feel bad about ourselves for setting boundaries or saying no, over time we can stop respecting ourselves and end up feeling ashamed about being a walking doormat. It’s truly a no-win situation - for us, at least. (And it bears thinking about who does benefit from this situation. Hmm…)

But luckily, we have the power to release ourselves from the burden of toxic shame. It isn’t as easy as many coaches and healers would like us to believe, but it isn’t as hard as endless therapy sessions might cause us to believe either.

In my next article I’ll be sharing how to do this, so if you want to hear about it as soon as it comes out, sign up to get my email newsletter or follow me on Facebook.

This may seem surprising, but your shame doesn’t actually want to work so hard all the time. It will be just as happy as you to finally get a break. And you both deserve it!

Feeling Bad About Yourself? Understanding Toxic Shame
How Past Wounds Cause Present-Day Problems [And What You Can Do About It]HealingGeneralJessica MooreWed, 01 Aug 2018 08:02:00 +0000 emotions like anxiety, anger, and shame spiral out of control, most likely they’re responding to the past - not the present. In this article you’ll learn why this happens, and what you can do to bring your emotions back into balance.Have you ever experienced an argument that just got under your skin, and hours later found yourself going over it in your mind, thinking about all the things you would say and do if you were back in that situation again?

Maybe you couldn’t even stop thinking about it for days afterward?

Or perhaps you move on from arguments pretty easily, but whenever you think about the person you tangled with, your body tenses up and you get a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. Or perhaps you don’t think you “feel” anything at all, but you just find yourself avoiding that person for weeks or months afterward - or simply never talking to them again.

Each of us experiences this differently, but what is happening is the same. We’re getting triggered.

A trigger is any emotional response that is out of proportion to what the actual situation calls for.

Also commonly called “pushing our buttons”, when this happens to us other people often don’t understand our reaction - and can even judge us as irrational and childish.

What they’re not seeing, however, is all the people who get triggered in a different way… by shutting down. People who become withdrawn and emotionally numb in response to difficult situations - who under-react - are often praised for having good self-control. But the truth is, shutting off our feelings is no more mature or healthy than those who over-react.

Our culture considers under-reacting to be normal (and expected) and over-reacting to be wrong (and immature), even in our language. Just now as I’m writing this, my spell-checker sees “overreacting” as a word, but “underreacting” is flagged as incorrect. That shows how rarely under-reacting is recognized!

Getting triggered happens to everyone. So let’s remove the stigma around it, and see it for what it really is: an emotional flashback.

Let me explain.

Our triggers come from our past.

When we get triggered by something, it’s natural to think that the person or situation that triggered us is the source of our emotional reaction. In reality, though, the true source lies in our past.

Behind every trigger is a time in our history (usually in our childhood) when we experienced a similar situation, and it wasn’t resolved for us. In other words, our true need in that moment was never met, so a piece of our psyche became “frozen”, or stuck, in that moment in time.

And now, whenever we encounter a situation that causes us to feel the same way (however slightly), that moment in time gets reactivated within us and we “flash back” to that original wounding event, causing us to feel the same emotional pain all over again.

That’s why the emotions we feel seem (to others, at least) to be so disproportionate to the event. It’s because we aren’t in present time anymore! Not emotionally, at least.

We think of flash-backs as something that only people with PTSD experience, such as soldiers who’ve been traumatized by combat. But emotional wounding happens on a spectrum, from deep traumas to little things we often dismiss as no big deal (such as being ignored by a parent when we really needed attention).

We like to think of children as resilient by nature - and they are - but in doing so we often discount how things are perceived from a child’s point of view. As children we are physically dependent on others to survive, so in that time of life, things like not getting enough attention can provoke a very literal fear of death.

When our past wounds get continually reactivated in our lives, it can throw our emotions seriously out of whack.

We can easily end up with social anxiety, out-of-control anger, and even panic attacks. Or we might simply feel depressed all the time, and struggle to enjoy anything at all.

When this happens, we naturally look to the emotions themselves as the source of our problems (damn anxiety!), or try over and over again to fix or change the present-time situations that keep triggering us. But as I’ve shared, the true problem isn’t present-time!

Seeing the emotions themselves as the problem is a lot like shooting the messenger. No, actually, it’s exactly like shooting the messenger, because our emotions are precisely that - messengers. They’re like the flag waving on the golf course that shows us the location of the hole, or in this case, the past wound behind it all.

Yes, the emotions that arise when we get triggered are often inappropriate to the situation, but they’re the symptom, not the cause.

I believe this is precisely why drugs and therapy so often don’t work in resolving emotional problems like anxiety and depression. If those emotions aren’t arising in response to the present, no amount of talking or “fixing” the situation will resolve them.

And while it is entirely possible to artificially alter brain chemistry (and emotional states), the underlying wound remains unhealed. So once the drugs go away, the emotional problems come back.


Unfortunately, doing the same thing over and over with little to show for it is precisely what clinical psychologists and therapists will tell you is necessary for emotional healing.

This couldn’t be further from the truth!

I say this from years of personal experience, and from seeing hundreds of people transform their emotional lives in a very short span of time. The reason why most people believe that emotional healing takes years to achieve, is because the tools they are using simply aren’t very effective.

With all the countless therapists, psychiatrists, and counselors practicing today, if the current solutions on offer were actually effective, mental “illnesses” like anxiety and depression wouldn't be becoming full-blown epidemics. And yet they are.

It is extremely difficult to find effective methods of healing nowadays, even though there are healers on every street corner. Actually, this is because there are healers on every street corner!

On the one side we have the mental health industry, limited by methods that can be “tested” in scientific studies and heavily influenced by pharmaceutical companies. On the other side are all of the people peddling spiritual bypass cloaked in the guise of spiritual and emotional healing, tricking people into thinking they are healing when what they are really doing is dissociating and learning to shut down their feelings.

Can you tell that I’m passionate about this?

In my own path of healing, I was extremely fortunate to avoid these traps by learning an emotional healing practice that actually works.

It works in part because it is the opposite of spiritual bypass. There is no blissing out while someone else “heals” us, no analyzing and “fixing it” with the mind, and no avoidance of the pain. This healing method requires us to profoundly witness and accept all of the deeply held feelings inside us.  

But it doesn’t stop there (like many other practices do)!

It also takes us back into the past, to the original wounding behind our present-day triggers, where we bring healing to ourselves by giving ourselves whatever we needed in that moment to make it right within us. This allows us to reclaim the part of ourselves that was frozen in that moment in time, which means we literally will never be triggered in that same way again.

This bears repeating. Unlike methods that focus on down-regulating our nervous systems (like EFT), we don’t just resolve the trigger this one time, but forever. Noticing the absence of our usual reaction the next time we encounter that same trigger is how we know that the healing was successful.

And the most beautiful thing about this is that we can begin to view our triggers as gifts, and opportunities to heal.

Once we are equipped with an emotional healing practice that works, effectively and efficiently, our triggers stop being obstacles and instead become signposts directing us to where we need to heal.

We can stop cursing at life for being so difficult, and can instead feel gratitude even in the midst of discomfort - because we know that life is bringing to us precisely what we need in our journey of healing and growth.

This healing practice is the cornerstone of my personal path, and of my professional practice as well. It is the most profoundly effective tool I’ve ever found for personal transformation, and I have added quite a few tools to my toolbox over the years!

Many spiritual teachers talk about the virtues of “being present” in our lives, but rarely do they give specific guidance in how to achieve that. This is how.

By healing the parts of ourselves that are frozen in the past, we are able to bring them back into the present - and each time we do this we become less fragmented, and more whole. To me, this is what it truly means to be fully present: emotionally responding to the present moment, not the past!

This is my wish for you as well. If you’d like to experience this transformation for yourself, get in touch! You can book a complimentary Emotional Breakthrough session to find out if this is right for you.

Whatever you decide, and wherever your healing journey takes you, may you find all that you need to carry you forward.

From Enemy to Ally: How Anxiety Is Meant To Serve YouAnxietyJessica MooreMon, 02 Jul 2018 03:00:00 +0000 isn't just a sign that our emotions are out of whack or that something is wrong with us, it is a vitally important emotion in and of itself. If we act on it wisely by honoring it's true purpose, we can make it work for us instead of against us.One of the stories I still remember from my childhood is the old fable of the ant and the grasshopper. 

In the tale, the grasshopper enjoyed playing music during the long summer days, and couldn’t understand why the ant insisted on toiling so hard to carry ears of corn when there was such an abundance of food all around them. But then winter arrived, and the grasshopper found himself dying of starvation. By the time he realized the importance of storing food for the winter, it was too late.

Many spiritual philosophies and self-help gurus espouse the virtues of living in the moment - and they’re not wrong! The more we can be fully present in our lives, the more fully we will live them. 

But these philosophies go sideways when they tell us that worrying always causes suffering and should be avoided without exception. Because if we truly didn’t worry about anything at all, we’d be no different than the grasshopper who dies of hunger when the winter finally arrives.

Most of us are only aware of anxiety when our heart starts to race and we become mired in worry and self-doubt. It makes sense to denounce it when it makes our life miserable. But anxiety didn’t evolve in us just to be a giant pain in the ass! In truth, we evolved to feel anxiety because it is essential to our health and wellbeing.

Anxiety is the aspect of our fear that looks to the future, anticipating potential problems and dangers.

The reason why anxiety gives us tons of nervous energy is because it evolved to move us into action to avoid or prevent those future problems. Our distant ancestors would have started to worry in the fall if they didn’t have enough food stored up to last the winter (just like the ant!), and that anxiety would have motivated them to do what was needed to make up the shortfall.

In today’s world, you might feel anxiety around an upcoming presentation at work, motivating you to get started on it early enough to have time to fully prepare for it. If you didn’t feel any anxiety at all, you’d be far less likely to give a high quality presentation.

Hopefully you’re starting to see some of the ways anxiety helps you in your life, and why it’s an important emotion to feel (at least a little bit). It becomes a problem when it gets excessive, either growing out of proportion to what the situation actually calls for, or when it becomes too strong to be able to effectively handle in the moment.

However, even when extreme anxiety is warranted in certain situations (such as when your car breaks down on the highway on the way to a crucial job interview), it still can be challenging to deal with.

So how can we keep our anxiety manageable, so that it is helpful rather than disruptive?

As with any emotion, the best way to make anxiety happy (so it chills out!) is by listening to what it is telling us, and taking the actions it is calling for. In the example of the work presentation, we could double-check our slides, take more time to practice it, create a checklist of all the supplies we’ll need to bring with us, set our alarm a bit earlier that morning, etc.

Anxiety loves it when we get organized, and it wants us to be prepared. To Do lists are one of best things to help our anxiety to relax, and they work even better if we start taking action to complete those To Dos, one by one.

So whenever you start feeling those nerves, write a list! And if you already have a list, write more lists! (I’m a firm believer that you can never have too many lists).

The best place to start is to simply get everything in your head onto a piece of paper. Think of it as a giant “brain dump”. Often the very act of getting things out of your head will start to help you relax.

Once you see all of your thoughts there in front of you, then you can organize them into separate lists by putting an x by everything that needs to be done immediately, a * by things that can be delegated to others, a + by things that can wait, and so on.

Another way you can calm your anxiety down is by organizing and decluttering your personal space.

Have you ever tried to work surrounded by piles of stuff, and felt that you just couldn’t think clearly? This is because our anxiety interprets chaos and complexity around us as yet more things that need to be dealt with, so it amps up accordingly.

The first step in decluttering and organizing your environment is rather obvious, if not very fun: cleaning up. Do the dishes, pick up dirty clothes, and put things away where they’re supposed to go.

Once that’s done, look for things that habitually lie around out in the open (claiming every available surface as their own), and see if you can’t find special places for them to go as well.

Resist the temptation to simply stuff things into the nearest drawer, as not being able to find them later might provoke more anxiety in the long run! But at the same time, don’t feel like you have to do a full-on re-organization of all the storage spaces in your house in order to get more organized and tidy.

If you expect perfection or turn this into a massive project, it’ll have the opposite effect on your anxiety, so don’t think too hard about it - just get started. Every little bit helps! And the more Zen your space becomes, the more calm you’ll feel.

With all of that said, keep in mind that your goal shouldn’t be to never feel anxiety, ever.

Now that you understand the true purpose of anxiety, you’ll know that it arises for a reason - and you’ll know what to do when it shows up. In this way, anxiety can become a valuable ally (dare I say a friend?), by letting us know when our preparedness or organization is lacking, and motivating us to do something about it.

I believe that the people who accomplish the most and are most “on top of things” in their lives, are those who’ve learned to work with their anxiety in this way. And we’re all capable of it!

Whether we tend to be resistant to anxiety like the grasshopper (that’s me! a natural-born procrastinator), or whether we tend to feel our anxiety a little too keenly, we all stand to benefit from working with our anxiety effectively.

However, if your anxiety is out of balance, it may take some additional work to get it where it needs to be to truly serve you in your life. In just a few weeks I’ll be sharing a brand new, free DIY Guide to Calming Anxiety, that will explain the most common reasons why anxiety so often gets too big for its britches and starts acting like an enemy rather than an ally.

This guide will also include a series of quizzes to help you assess why anxiety might be problematic for you, along with strategies to overcome them. I’ll be sharing this in The Unlocked Heart newsletter as a free download as soon as it comes out, so if you don’t want to miss it, you can sign up for my newsletter here.

In the meantime, give these ideas for calming anxiety a try, and let me know how it goes!

May your anxiety become the ally it was truly meant to be.

From Enemy to Ally: How Anxiety Is Meant To Serve You
Solving Boundary Issues with Healthy AngerEmotion SkillsAngerJessica MooreFri, 01 Jun 2018 07:20:00 +0000 my previous article, I describe the essential daily steps you need to take to strengthen and maintain healthy boundaries. But there’s one essential element that I left out, because it deserves an article all of its own. This secret ingredient is your healthy anger.Now hold on just a minute, how can anger be healthy?

Let me explain.

Even though anger can be very destructive when acted upon unwisely, it is actually a very protective emotion by nature. Because of its protective nature, anger is the emotion most intimately connected with our boundaries, and it plays a vital role in our ability to cultivate healthy boundaries.

Anger arises to let us know when our personal sovereignty is being threatened or violated, and it can even arise on behalf of others when this violation is happening to someone else. It is the natural emotion to arise in any situation of injustice.

We can think of anger as a sentry, stalking the edges of our boundaries and standing ready to defend them.

Anger exists to move us into action, whenever action is needed to maintain the integrity of our boundaries, our sense of self, or whatever we consider to be “ours”.

Because of this, it carries with it tremendous power - which is why it is so important to be able to handle our anger well, and act on it appropriately. I emphasize this last point, because it is a widespread cultural belief that anger is a “negative” emotion and inherently toxic.

The problem with this belief is that it narrows our response to anger to one thing: repression. And while it is true that unfettered expression of anger is often harmful, repressing anger is also harmful (to the person feeling it).

Luckily, we have a third option! Instead of expression or repression, it is entirely possible to channel our anger into constructive action. To me, this is emotional intelligence at its best.

Acting on anger constructively allows it to accomplish its purpose of keeping us safe and empowered in life. In this way, it also allows our anger to chill out - because all of our emotions will naturally recede when their job is done.

Conversely, the quickest way to create chronic anger problems (feeling anger all the time) is to repress anger and fight against it. And the other tragic consequence of denying our anger is that our boundaries are left undefended - which means they are, for all practical purposes, useless.

Having healthy boundaries not only requires being able to say “no”, but also being able and willing to enforce that “no” when necessary. If we don’t stand up for our boundaries to enforce them, then they have no substance, no reality.

Our anger is a fundamental aspect of our power.

Without access to our healthy anger (our devoted sentry!), it becomes nearly impossible to enforce our boundaries.

Not only are we left without the incredible energy that anger provides (the kind of energy that allows us to fight off an attacker), but we are also left without the willpower that goes along with that energy. Without access to our anger, we’ll find ourselves choosing to stay silent and give in, even when that’s not what we actually want.

When our anger is exiled from our psyche, we will have a hard time standing up for ourselves, and will actually end up valuing the needs and desires of others more than our own. This is the reason why so many of us self-abandon, and say “yes” to things that we shouldn’t in order to make other people happy.

Anger gives us clarity about where our boundaries need to be, by arising as irritation when they are being pushed against, and in full-blown anger mode when they’ve been well and truly crossed.

This anger also communicates our boundaries to others, even without speaking, because we all evolved to empathically sense others emotions - and anger is the emotion that tells us when we’ve bumped up against another person’s boundaries. But even when someone doesn’t notice our anger, it also gives us the desire and energy to verbally (or even physically) communicate our boundaries as needed.

Anger is our single biggest ally in achieving healthy boundaries.

So if you find yourself being taken advantage of over and over again, take a look within and see if your anger is suppressed or not allowed in your psyche. If this is the case, now is the time to make friends with it again!

The first step in establishing a healthy relationship with your anger is to notice when it arises, preferably in its more subtle forms (before it gets big and ragey!). 

If you find yourself feeling angry about something, that is often a red flag that your boundaries have been crossed in some way. Perhaps you waited too long to set a boundary because you didn’t realize that it needed to be there, or the person disrespected a boundary because it wasn’t communicated clearly enough. Or perhaps they’re just a jerk!

Either way, your anger is a sign that some additional boundary-setting action is needed. So the second step in a healthy relationship with anger is to feel into what action it is calling for, and then do it.

This is not only good for you, but it will also be good for others - because the more you respect your anger by listening to it, the more it will stay at a lower (more manageable) level, so the easier it will be to act on your anger while also staying respectful of other people.

If your anger comes on super strong, it is much harder to act on it honorably.

Luckily, there’s a way that you can bring your anger level down to a more manageable level before acting on it. Here’s how to do it.

First, get in touch with the anger that you’re feeling in the moment. Then use your intention, and ability to visualize, to feel/see/sense your anger pouring into your energetic boundary.

If you are unfamiliar with this concept, see my previous article on boundaries for how to get in touch with your energetic boundary. You can imagine it as an oval shape that goes all around your body, about half of an arms length out.

When you pour your anger into it, you can visualize this happening however works best for you. For example, you can imagine that your anger is a flame-thrower, setting your entire boundary aflame with its power.

Continue channeling your anger into your boundary for however long feels right. This is great to do before taking action because it helps our anger to calm down, not because we're repressing or "releasing" it, but because we're allowing our anger to do the precise job it wants to do: strengthening our boundaries and our sense of self.

A caution, however, is not to use this practice as a way of releasing anger without taking the actions that are ultimately needed to enforce and maintain your healthy boundaries in the world. The danger with all effective ways of down-regulating our emotions is that they can easily be misused, as a form of spiritual bypass.

Tools to calm down our emotions are best used to help us engage with our emotions more fully, whether this is acting on our anger constructively, or exploring past emotional wounds for healing. Emotional intelligence doesn’t mean not having emotions; it means knowing how to engage with our feelings so that they serve us in the best way possible.

May your anger serve you well!

Most emotional patterns are learned in childhood, so if you were not allowed to feel anger in your family, that can set you up for life-long boundary challenges. I specialize in transforming patterns such as these, so if this is something you struggle with, I offer free Emotional Breakthrough sessions to help you clarify what exactly you need to move forward. With the right tools, even the most persistent pattern can be transformed!

Solving Boundary Issues with Healthy Anger
How to Manage Sensitivity with Healthy BoundariesEmotion SkillsJessica MooreWed, 16 May 2018 05:54:00 +0000 we’re more sensitive than we want to be, this usually means that our boundaries are not robust enough to serve our health and well-being. Here are the 3 essential steps for creating and maintaining healthy boundaries.Do you have a hard time with crowds because you can feel the swirling mass of emotions of everyone around you? Do other people’s bad moods bring you down for hours? Do you feel that your sensitivity is a curse, or a superpower that you can’t control?

Being highly sensitive can be a powerful gift, but only when your sensitivity is brought into balance. More sensitivity is not always better, and beyond a certain point it can make your life feel out of control.

Da-ta-daaa! Boundaries to the rescue!

Our boundaries exist to clarify where our sphere of influence ends and another’s sphere of influence begins. Within our sphere we are sovereign, which is why boundary violations feel so intrusive.

Many of us struggle with healthy boundaries - either respecting our own boundaries or those of others (or both) - because our parents didn’t do a good job of helping us develop healthy boundaries. Some of us were even taught in childhood that it wasn’t safe to have boundaries at all, causing us to disable our boundaries altogether.

This is a big problem, because our boundaries define our personal space - and we need to be sovereign there in order to be able to step into our full power and potential. One of the surest signs that our boundaries are being disrespected is whenever we don’t feel sovereign over our body and our personal space (and the things that are rightfully ours).

Another sign of unhealthy (or inadequate) boundaries is absorbing emotions from other people, and picking up ambient emotions in the environment. Now, we all do this to some degree (empathy is an innate human ability), but when we aren’t able to distinguish between our own emotions and the emotions of others - or when we take others’ emotions on as our own instead of merely perceiving them - this points to boundary problems.

Boundaries and sensitivity are directly connected. Diffuse, open boundaries allow in more information (and thus cause greater sensitivity), while thick and dense boundaries limit this sensitivity.

It is common in modern spiritual philosophies to seek ever greater openness and sensitivity, but as with everything in life, health comes through balance - not extremes. People who are insensitive and less empathic might need to increase their sensitivity by becoming more open, but this is the opposite of what someone who is already highly sensitive (and who probably has shaky boundaries) should do.

However, regardless of where you fall on the spectrum of sensitivity, boundary cultivation will benefit you because it is all about adjusting your boundaries in whatever way best serves your life. This is truly a practice that is helpful for everyone.

The first step in strengthening boundaries is becoming acquainted with them on an energetic level.

Our boundaries are not just lived in everyday interactions - they are also a fundamental part of our energy body.

We have instinctive sense of them (when they are healthy), and can feel when people push into or cross through our boundaries. This instinctive boundary sense is why birds on a telephone wire all perch a certain distance from each other, and why we notice when someone stands too close (this is usually because they have boundary problems themselves, and thus a poor sense of the boundaries of others).

The current state of our energetic boundary is determined primarily by two things: the way we learned to be, energetically, in response to our childhood experiences (our energetic “habits”, if you will); and our daily choices around setting and maintaining boundaries.

While each of these factors affect each other, our daily boundary choices usually flow from the energetic state of our boundaries, which is why checking in with the latter is the best place to begin if we wish to change our boundary habits.

To do this, simply take a moment to “feel into” your boundary, with all of your intuitive senses. It should be around a half of an arms-length away from your body in all directions.

When you sense into it, what do you find? Is your boundary too thin, or too far away from you? Is it super dense, or uncomfortably close to your body? Are there holes or tears? Is it non-existent behind you? It is even possible for one's boundary to be completely disabled, as a coping mechanism learned in childhood.

Be sure to involve all of your “senses” as you notice what’s there. Does your boundary have a color? What is its texture? Do you sense any emotions held in it? Your intuition will translate the information into your own symbolic language, so be open to whatever you find.

The second step is to visualize repairing and strengthening your energetic boundaries.

Directing energy with visualization always works best if you work with what’s actually there (vs simply focusing on how you want things to be), which is why this is the second step rather than the first. Once you have a sense of whatever repair or reinforcing is needed, you can make those changes simply by visualizing qi entering you from the universe and directing it wherever it needs to go (to fill holes, thicken it, pull the boundary in, etc).

Don’t forget that you can direct this energy with your physical body as well. Many modalities (such as qi gong and tai chi) combine physical movement with intention and visualization, with powerful results.

Your goal should be boundaries that are:

  • a comfortable (half-arms length) distance away from your body
  • completely encompassing you above, behind, and below (through the floor) with no holes or tears
  • and dense enough to feel solid and effective.

You can also add the intention for your boundaries to:

  • be adaptable (able to change to reflect the needs of the moment)
  • give you information about your environment
  • and be selectively permeable (allowing in what is healthy for you and keeping out what isn’t).

Also keep in mind that changing energetic habits takes time, so one visualization won’t be enough to change your boundaries permanently. Creating and maintaining healthy boundaries requires a daily boundary-cultivation practice, although the more you do this the quicker and easier it will be. Eventually a simple 2 minute check-in each morning may be all that you need to keep them in tip-top shape!

Now it’s time to examine your daily choices and how they impact your boundaries.

Cultivating your energetic boundaries is vital, but all the visualization in the world won’t help if your daily choices counteract the changes you’re trying to make. This is why it’s also important to make sure that your choices throughout the day support healthy boundaries.

Many things we do affect our boundaries such as enforcing the boundaries that we’ve set with others, and saying “no” when we’re really feeling no.

In your daily interactions with people at home and at work, begin to notice how well you honor your own boundaries and the boundaries of others. If you’re not sure, ask your friends (and trusted co-workers) to give you honest feedback.

It’s also worth taking a look at some other factors that can affect your boundaries, such as what you eat and drink (some things really open us up energetically, like sugar and alcohol), and how grounded you are (being ungrounded can make it harder to stay centered in our own boundaries).

If you habitually experience difficulty setting healthy boundaries with others, in addition to your daily energetic boundary practice, you can call in qi from the universe to strengthen your boundaries right there in the conversation.

This can help you gain clarity about where your boundaries need to be in that moment, which is essential for you to be able to honor them. Once your boundaries are clearly set within yourself, you may not even need to communicate them, as others will often sense them without even realizing it.

But with that said, having healthy boundaries also requires the willingness to communicate them and enforce them as necessary. If this is something you struggle with, my next blog post will reveal the secret ingredient necessary to do this (hint: it’s an emotion!). Stay tuned!

How to Manage Sensitivity with Healthy Boundaries
How a Trekkie Became an Emotion Whisperer: My StoryGeneralJessica MooreWed, 02 May 2018 00:46:00 +0000 you tend to be “up in your head” and desire to relate more from the heart, there’s hope! I used to be a firm believer in the superiority of the mind over feeling, but over time I realized that the cost was simply too high. Here’s how I reclaimed my emotional life.Even though I don't speak Klingon as a second language like the guys in Big Bang Theory, in many other ways I'm just what you would expect in a Star Trek fan. I grew up an introverted bookworm, who loved logic puzzles and considered math to be my favorite subject (until I hit calculus - yikes!)

Like many cerebral people - and Star Trek lovers - I ended up over-developing my mind at the expense of my heart. Here's my story of how I found my way back to vulnerability, heart connection, and learning to love my emotions.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

As a child, my parents would tease me for being dead to the world when my nose was in a book. 

My reading skills notwithstanding, school felt overwhelming to me at first, and books were my refuge. I remember getting in trouble with my first grade teacher for sneaking books into class and reading instead of listening to her! 

Once I settled in, I became a great student, but that wasn't just because I liked learning. Focusing on schoolwork was also a way of coping with not having any friends, and being ostracized and rejected by all the other kids.

This became my lifelong pattern: going up into my head (and withdrawing into my own world) as a way of protecting myself from being rejected and hurt by others. I desperately wanted to connect and belong, but my early school experiences taught me that wasn't safe, and so I closed down my heart.

As I got a bit older, my parents let me stay up (until 11! I felt like such a big girl) to watch Star Trek with them.

I was enthralled by Spock, and loved Data even more. The Vulcan philosophy of valuing logic over emotion, and the innate android ability to stay calm and detached in any situation, were compelling to me because they matched the path I had subconsciously chosen.

I wanted to be mature, strong, and not needing anyone but myself and the comfort of my own mind. And I achieved this... on the outside, at least. Inside I was, quite simply, shut down.

It wasn't until many years later, as I worked to uncover my authentic self through shamanic practice, that I slowly began to realize how much I had been denying my heart, and my deep (and hidden) desire for connection and emotional depth in relationships.

My whole life I had been unknowingly putting up a wall between myself and other people, which blocked me from developing true friendships - and from having the intimate relationships I longed for. Even when I tried to connect with people, I wasn't fully able to empathize in a way that made people feel that I cared... so they invariably drifted away.

Long story short, a shamanic friend introduced me to Karla McLaren's book The Language of Emotions, and I was hooked. Not only did it open the door to a vast realm that I hardly knew anything about (except that I needed to go there), but it also made so much sense that my rational mind loved it too. It was a true win-win!

As I learned about my emotions and worked to heal the original wounds that had caused me to close off my heart, I found myself opening up more - and found others opening up to me as well. It took me years to work through the fear of vulnerability (which was paralyzingly strong at first!), but the more I sat in that fire the easier it got.

And I also discovered that I had a knack for inner exploration and a passion for emotional healing. I had learned the hard way how important emotions are for us to live happy, fulfilled lives, and how much we need effective ways of working skillfully with our emotions.

From the girl who wanted to be like Spock, I am now proud to call myself an Emotion Whisperer.

P.S.  If you would like to hear more about my (rather unique) point of view about the problematic things we are taught about emotions in our culture, and what science has to say about it, check out my recent interview on the Mind Flipping podcast. 

Rick and I had a great time discussing emotional mindfulness and how to achieve true emotional wisdom - and the reason why many "thought-leaders" out there may be steering you wrong.  His podcast is brilliant, and is full of tips to up-level your mind and life.  Enjoy!

How a Trekkie Became an Emotion Whisperer: My Story
The Simplest Solution to Out-of-Control AnxietyAnxietyEmotion SkillsJessica MooreTue, 17 Apr 2018 01:37:00 +0000 excessive or cycling anxiety can happen for many reasons, one of the most common causes is simply a lack of grounding. If you are one of those who suffer from anxiety, it makes sense to try the simplest solution first. Here’s how.If you’ve ever felt panicky about an upcoming deadline, or so nervous about doing something that you thought you were going to be sick, you probably consider anxiety to be a giant pain in the ass.  And for good reason!

Anxiety has the ability to destroy your confidence, make your life feel out-of-control, and hold you back from following your heart’s true desires.  It can be one of the biggest obstacles to the life you want to live.

However, it isn’t supposed to be this way.  We have evolved to feel all of our emotions for a reason, and anxiety is no exception.  

When it is in balance, anxiety serves a very important function of helping us to think ahead to the future, make plans, and get organized.  It is the motivation behind making To Do lists to accomplish our goals, and setting alarms on our phone so that we wake up on time for all the important things we’ve chosen to do. 

However, when anxiety is overactive it stops being helpful, and starts making our life miserable.  When it is excessive, it can run us in circles, make us afraid to try new things, and even lead to panic attacks.  

And most of the time, our anxiety gets to this state for one simple reason: we aren’t grounded enough.

Being grounded means being fully embodied, so any time we shift our awareness away from our bodies (and the physical world around us) and into the realm of ideas (and mental activity), we become less grounded in that moment.  And all of these individual moments inform our overall state of groundedness. 
Our modern way of life is constantly engaging our mind, and mental activities are central to many of the ways that we make our living.  And at the same time, modern living is also very sedentary.  While our ancestors used our bodies constantly throughout the day, many of us struggle just to get in 30 minutes of exercise.

And to top that off, we now spend so much time indoors that we sometimes don’t even see the sun for days.  Even when we go for a walk in nature, the rubber of our shoes prevents us from electrically grounding to the earth.  This seems normal to us today, but keep in mind that our ancestors - who didn’t have rubber and plastic - were electrically “grounded” 100% of the time.  Today, we might get that kind of real, physical grounding a few times a year (unless we are lucky enough to have a garden!)

So as you can see, ungroundedness has really become our modern baseline.  Even children, who naturally tend to be “in their bodies”, are becoming less grounded due to the influence of TV, video games, and the long hours they spend sitting at a desk in school.

There are many other daily choices we can (and do) make that make us less grounded as well.  Sugar, carbs, and caffeine all tend to negatively impact our grounding, and even certain kinds of meditation and spiritual activities (such as guided visualizations and shamanic journeying) can be ungrounding by pulling us away from our felt experience of the here and now.

But you may be wondering what the heck this has to do with anxiety?  

Here’s how they are connected.

As we’ve seen, being grounded means being fully in our bodies, and our emotions and bodies are very closely intertwined.  Emotions always cause a physiological response (such as how anxiety activates our nervous system), and our physiology affects our emotions (which is why slow breathing can calm our anxiety).  The state of one affects the other.

But the connection between anxiety and grounding goes beyond that, into the realm of psychology and spirituality.  There is something fundamentally calming and soothing about feeling rooted in the earth, and it is our connection to the earth that gives us our most basic sense of belonging, home, resilience, and safety.

So if we are chronically ungrounded, it follows that we would have difficulty feeling this fundamental sense of home and safety.  Why do so many highly spiritual (and highly sensitive) people feel like they don’t truly belong on this earth?  Most likely because they are not rooted enough in the earth (and their bodies), energetically.

Anxiety is the form of fear that anticipates danger (or negative outcomes) that could happen in the future.

So you can imagine what a persistent, subtle feeling of not being safe might do to our anxiety!

Luckily, our state of grounding is something that is fully within our power to fix… and more grounded life choices are almost always healthier for us anyway!  If you are someone who struggles with too much anxiety, becoming more grounded will give you immediate relief.

Here is a list of some simple changes and additions to your daily routine, that you can use to cultivate a more grounded state of being.

1)  Cut back on caffeine, sugar, and simple carbs.  

Unless you’re already a minimalist, you’ll definitely notice many beneficial side-effects from this one change - once your initial cravings subside (and they will, so hang in there!)

2)  Move your body more.

Probably the single best tool for getting grounded is physical activity.  This doesn’t have to constitute “exercise”; any movement that gets you feeling more in your body will have a grounding effect (my personal favorites are qi gong and yoga).  Of course, this benefit can be negated if you spend the entire time daydreaming, so be sure to move mindfully.

3)  Take frequent, short breaks from screen time.

Ideally these would be movement breaks, but even looking up from the computer and gazing out of the window for a minute will help return you to the present. (And this is also good for your eyesight as well!)  Another great thing to do for a momentary break is a simple sensory meditation, either by focusing on your breathing or bringing your awareness to each of your physical senses.

4)  Begin and end your day with gentle movement.

This is a variation on #2, but it’s important because the tendency to jump straight into mental activity in the morning - and straight from mental stimulation into bed at night - can set us up for ungrounded days and sleepless nights.  You can avoid this by starting your day right, and giving yourself a few minutes to wind down and calm your nervous system at night.  And it feels so good to do this, believe me!

5)  Welcome in your sadness.

Wait a minute, wasn’t this article about anxiety?  Yes it is, and all of the emotions affect each other.  How this happens is a subject for another time, but here it is important to make the connection between sadness and anxiety.

While anxiety has an activating effect on the nervous system, sadness is inherently calming and down-regulating.  I would even go so far as to say that our ability to ground is fundamentally connected to our ability to feel sadness - so if we regularly suppress our sadness, this will likely result in chronic ungroundedness (and excessive anxiety).  By helping us to relax, let go, and surrender to the moment, sadness can be a great ally with bringing anxiety into balance.

6)  Revitalize your grounding cord with a simple visualization.

If you don’t have any truck with the idea of having an energy body, feel free to skip this one.  But if you want to cultivate your grounding on an energetic level, one of the most important ways to do this is to spend a few minutes each day clarifying and strengthening your grounding cord.  

To do this, first check in with the current state of your grounding cord (extending downward from the base of your spine), using your intuition to sense its size, smoothness, straightness, color, density, etc.  Once you have a sense of it, follow it all the way to the center of the earth, making sure (with your intention) that it is anchored in the very center of the planet.  

Then using the earth’s energy and your intention, make whatever changes you feel are needed (such as increasing its size to whatever size you feel you need to be fully grounded).  Finally, spend a couple minutes envisioning and feeling the nourishing energy of the earth moving up your grounding cord and into your body, bringing energetic nourishment and revitalization to your whole being.

Excessive anxiety can feel like a curse, but the cause (and the cure) may be simpler than you think.

Just as with any other problem, it’s always best to start with trying the simplest solution first.  If you are challenged by anxiety and aren’t a naturally grounded person (or have simply never thought about it before), I encourage you to give some of these suggestions a try.

However, if you make a sincere effort to get more grounded and that doesn’t shift your anxiety, don’t feel like a failure!  There’s likely something deeper (and more complex) that needs to be addressed, and there’s nothing shameful about needing help.  

If you are finding yourself in need of professional assistance and would like to avoid spending years in therapy, I specialize in creating profound and rapid transformation around emotions like anxiety.  Honestly, that’s my passion!  Even if you simply want some free advice, you can book a complementary Emotional Breakthrough session with me anytime.

First, though, I highly suggest that you spend some time looking into your level of grounding, and then do whatever you feel is needed to ensure that your groundedness is where it needs to be to fully support you in your life.  Because your grounding is the foundation for all that you are, and all that you do.

The Simplest Solution to Out-of-Control Anxiety
Healing or Happiness: Why They're Not The Same ThingHealingHappinessGeneralJessica MooreMon, 02 Apr 2018 21:51:00 +0000 approach to modern health care focuses so much on removing symptoms, that we’ve been trained to equate immediate relief with healing. But healing is much more than simply feeling better in the moment; it requires true transformation, and transformation is rarely comfortable.My dad has always been a bulwark of strength and capability in my life, but that all changed six months ago, when he was diagnosed with lung cancer.

My parents, sister, and I have always prided ourselves on making healthy life choices, and until now we’d all enjoyed good health.  But now, for the first time in my life, someone in my immediate family is deathly ill… and none of us know what to do.

My dad decided to go with conventional treatment, and the rest of us have been wondering ever since whether it is helping him more than it is hurting him.  (After he almost died from a collapsed lung recently, I have extreme doubts.)

In wrestling with the question of whether poisoning my dad with chemotherapy is worth it, I realized that it isn’t just about whether the treatments make him feel bad in the moment - but about whether they are healing him in the long run.  Because often what makes us feel better only does so by masking the symptoms.

As I applied this realization to my professional passion (emotions), I found that this is especially true with regard to emotional healing.

If I went to a counselor to help me work through the shock and grief of my dad’s illness, and she succeeded in helping me to feel better, would I be healing?  Or would I be simply down-regulating (calming down) my emotions for a while?

I suspect that many tools and strategies that claim to provide emotional healing only address the symptoms, not the cause.  

While they often feel like healing (we can sometimes feel better almost immediately!), most of the time they don’t address the underlying issue any more than a band-aid does.  They succeed in creating a temporary change in one’s emotional state, but this change does not equal true transformation.

This may sound like a damning indictment of most emotional healing modalities, and in a way it is.  But I’m not saying that these tools aren’t helpful… they just don’t do what people think they do.

I believe the reason for this confusion lies in our cultural inability to discern between true healing and symptom-removal.  

We see this most prominently in our health care system, with entire drug cocktails being prescribed to manage the symptoms caused by other drugs — but it most definitely exists within the realm of emotional healing as well.

There is much to say about this topic, but here I’m going to restrain myself to discussing the difference between emotional healing and emotional down-regulation (the process of bringing the emotions back down to a quiet and peaceful state).  Both are important, but they have very different effects, and are helpful in very different ways.

The first thing I’d like to clarify is that emotional healing and down-regulation are not the same thing.  

True healing is always transformative, in that something has fundamentally changed in the person’s state of being.  This is true regardless of whether that fundamental change is physical, or emotional.

Down-regulation, on the other hand, is the emotional equivalent to giving someone a painkiller to numb the pain, or a shot of insulin to stabilize their blood sugar levels.  This is helpful and effective in removing painful (and potentially dangerous) symptoms, but it does not create a permanent change in the person’s being.

To bring problematic emotions under control, most meditations and “emotional healing” techniques focus on changing the emotions, often by changing one’s perspective.  But if simply changing the emotions is the goal, that’s treating the emotions themselves as the problem — the cause, rather than the symptom.

The problem with this is that it avoids getting to the root of the feeling, and resolving the issue there.  So while these methods do shift our emotional state in that moment, it won’t last.

I have learned by experience that when a deep emotional wound gets triggered in me, just changing my perspective in the moment (something I’m very good at) doesn't actually clear the trigger — it just makes me stop reacting to it in that moment.  While I may feel healed in the moment, in the long run I end up getting triggered again the next time that situation comes around, because the wound is still there. 

With all of the many forms of emotional healing that are out there these days, how can we distinguish between the ones that are truly helping us to heal, and the ones that simply help us to feel better in the moment?

The first way to notice whether our efforts to heal our emotional wounds are succeeding, is whether we end up in the same place in the long run.

In other words, are our efforts truly transforming us, or simply removing the symptoms of our inner struggle?

Now, I want to clarify something here.  The process of transformation does involve falling back into old patterns... temporarily.  Especially for the first two weeks after the initial transformative event, life tends to trip us back into the patterns we’ve chosen to step out of, as if to test our resolve and commitment to the new way of being.  

To explain this in terms of science, the process of transformation lays down new neural pathways in the brain, but the old pathways don’t immediately disappear.  They still linger on for a while until they fade away from disuse.  So after a genuine transformation takes place, we might experience ourselves momentarily falling back into the same old ways of thinking and behaving.  

But the difference is that after a transformative experience, those old behaviors are simply flash-backs, and stepping out of them now is as simple as choosing differently.  (And as many of us have experienced, until we transform it is not at all that simple).

Ultimately the proof is in the pudding:  will we end up feeling the same way in the same situation in the future, or in the long run do we find ourselves responding emotionally to life differently?  Time will tell, if we pay attention (and are honest with ourselves).

The second litmus test of whether we are emotionally healing…or not…is how we feel in the process.  

If whatever you are doing or experiencing is causing your emotions to become calm and peaceful as you are doing it, then you are almost certainly down-regulating rather than healing.

The difference between healing and down-regulating can be most succinctly summed up with these words:  change and stasis.

You may have heard the saying that growth can only ever happen when we work our edge of discomfort.  In every example I can think of, I find this to be true.  Where we are comfortable, we are stagnating.

To illustrate this, think about your workout routine, or one you’ve had in the past.  Do you become stronger and more fit while you are resting in between workouts?  Or does strength and fitness require effort and discomfort?

Our comfort zone is where things stay the same, where we rest and relax.  By definition, we are never challenged when we are in our comfort zone.  Change, on the other hand, requires moving out of our comfort zone and into new and uncharted waters.

In the emotional realm, our comfort zone is our calm and steady baseline, where we feel mainly happiness and contentment (what many would call inner peace).  Outside of this happy place is where our old hurts and painful feelings reside, and into these choppy waters we must go if we wish to truly heal.

Healing requires us to be willing to leave our calm baseline (our comfort zone), and feel instead all of the stormy emotions that make us really uncomfortable.  And no wonder, if we consider that the true nature of healing is transformation.  We cannot transform in our comfort zone!

But don’t get me wrong, being comfortable is important too.

Comfort and discomfort have a Yin and Yang balance, just like the healthy (and necessary) balance between resting and exercising.

It is natural and wise to retreat back into our comfort zone regularly, because that is where we rest, rejuvenate, and build up the strength and energy to be able to go back at it again.  

And similarly, when the discomfort gets to be too much and the healing gets too intense, tools that help us down-regulate become invaluable.  

Not only do they keep the discomfort at a manageable level so that we can successfully engage with our difficult emotions and “stay with” the process of healing, but they also give us much needed breaks when we simply need to rest.

And our emotions will naturally shift back to a peaceful and calm state once the healing is done!  This shift is one of the clearest signs that we’ve succeeded in healing something… but we also need to be careful with this.   

In the healing process, our emotions will also return to our normal baseline if we dissociate, get distracted, or otherwise lose the connection with what needs to heal.  It takes a certain level of skill and honesty with ourselves to be able to discern the difference between losing the thread, and bringing the process of healing to completion.

True healing, just like all growth, requires being willing to work our edge of discomfort.

This is especially true when it comes to emotional healing.  We simply cannot expect to transform our emotional state without diving deeply and engaging with the discomfort of our deepest and most difficult feelings. 

And at the same time, practices that down-regulate us back to baseline are also an important part of the transformative process, in the way they help us to keep our emotions at a manageable level.  Changing our emotional state at whim can also be very helpful in the process of establishing new habits and stabilizing new ways of being. 

So by knowing the difference between healing and down-regulation, and how they each serve us in different ways, my hope is that we can choose to use them both wisely, as valuable tools in our journeys of growth and transformation.

What are your experiences with healing and returning to inner peace?  I'd love to hear the wisdom you have to share.

And if you are unsure how to move forward in your emotional healing journey and could use some support, I’d be happy to hop on a free call with you to help you get your emotional ball rolling.  You can book your free Emotional Breakthrough session here.

Healing or Happiness: Why They're Not The Same Thing
Bringing Mindfulness To the HeartGeneralEmotion SkillsJessica MooreMon, 19 Mar 2018 05:01:56 +0000 meditative practices focus on the mind and becoming aware of our thoughts.  By bringing this same awareness to our emotions - and then going further by consciously engaging them and uncovering the wisdom they hold - we can gain a far greater level of emotional mastery.  This mastery comes not just from detachment, but from also allowing our emotions to fully flow, and receiving all that they have to offer us.All emotional intelligence begins with awareness.  If we aren’t aware that we are feeling an emotion, our responses to that emotion will be habitual and automatic - and this habitual response may not be what we want.  

















  • Why are you feeling this way?

  • What do you not like about this situation?

  • What do you want to happen instead?

  • What should I do about this? And so on.








Bringing Mindfulness To the Heart
3 Secrets To Transforming Stuck Emotional PatternsGeneralEmotion SkillsJessica MooreMon, 05 Mar 2018 04:38:00 +0000 you will learn the 3 most important ways of relating with your feelings, that together can transform your emotional life.  But be prepared - they may challenge everything else you've ever been told about emotions!  (And trust me, that's a good thing.)Are you a sensitive person who feels just a bit too much?  Do you struggle with cycling anxiety or self-criticism?  Do you sometimes just wish your emotions would go away and give you a break?

It may not seem like it, but even though your emotions may be causing problems for you, your emotions themselves are not the problem.  If you have tried every healing technique and self-help practice out there and you just can’t seem to get them to work, I can assure you that the problem is not you.

In order to successfully shift cycling emotions and stuck emotional patterns, it is crucial to understand and apply these 3 principles.

#1) The Middle Way

One of the reasons why emotions get a bad rap is because we are rarely taught any skills specific to our emotions, so we grow up thinking that we only have two options when we feel an emotion: letting our emotions dictate our behavior with no control (expression), or pushing them away and refusing to feel them at all (repression).

Consider our modern stereotypes of the stoic husband who never shows his feelings, and the hysterical wife who can't control her feelings.  Do either of these stereotypes feel healthy to you?  They very effectively illustrate the extremes of repression and expression, and the problems with both.

We all know how the uninhibited expression of emotions like anger and rage can be damaging to the people on the receiving end of them.  And at the same time, there is plenty of research out there on the negative health effects of suppressing those emotions.

If these were truly our only options, it would make sense to think of emotions as nothing more than obstacles to a healthy life.  Luckily, instead of struggling to never feel emotions or letting them dictate our behavior, we have a third option, a way of feeling our emotions and acting on them with conscious intention.

This Middle Way relates to the Buddhist concept of the same name in how it involves mindfulness: taking a cognitive “pause” between feeling an emotion and acting on it.  In this moment of self-reflection, we must first identify which emotions we are feeling, because we can’t work with our emotions very well if we can’t accurately identify them!

Once we’ve identified the emotions then we can question them to discover why they are arising.  Our emotions always arise to serve a specific purpose, and if we are able to discern that purpose, how we need to act on that emotion becomes clear.  You can read more about how to put this into practice here.

And figuring out what our emotions are trying to tell us doesn’t have to involve guesswork.  The model of emotions I use in my work, Dynamic Emotional Integration® (DEI), clearly outlines the purpose of the 17 emotions and the specific questions to ask of each of them.  These are all included in my guide to Unlocking Your Emotional Genius, which you will receive if you sign up for The Unlocked Heart newsletter.  

But for now, let’s move on to the second secret to working effectively with our emotions.

#2) Freedom of Flow

People tend to become aware of their emotions only when they arise strongly - what some call their mood state.  In fact, emotions arise at many levels of intensity, but we just aren’t taught to recognize them in their softer forms.

And this is important, because when we honor their message and act on them when they arise in their soft state, they will hardly ever have to ramp up to their highest intensity.  It is almost always easier to feel and work with our emotions at this softer level.

To illustrate how our emotions are continuously operating in this softer way, let me walk you through a simple exercise.  After you read this, close your eyes, lean forward a bit, and listen for the quietest sound in the room.  Try to extend your awareness to hear the most subtle sounds. .... Now open your eyes.

You were just accessing your soft fear!  Fear is present any time we are aware of our surroundings, keeping us alert and connected to our instincts.  I can only imagine what chaos we would experience when sharing the road with other drivers, if no one had their fear running quietly in the background!

All of our emotions operate in this same way.  Soft anger gives us our ability to speak up for ourselves in conflicts, and to firmly say no when we need to set a boundary.  Soft shame ensures that we consider others in our choices and actions, so that we can behave in kind and honorable ways.  And so on.

When each of our emotions are working properly in our psyche, each able to do the job they were biologically designed to do, they will ebb and flow through us with ease.  Healthy emotional flow is the key to inner peace!

And this requires that we honor all of our emotions, because when we try to control this flow, by seeking to feel certain ones while pushing other ones away, we end up blocking the flow altogether.  And that leads us straight to the last, and most important, principle for effective emotional functioning:

#3) Neutralize the "Negative"

There are no good and bad emotions; all emotions bring vital messages and are key to our emotional intelligence.  The single quickest way to create stuck emotional patterns is to label every emotion other than happiness as "negative", because then we would naturally end up repressing or denying them.

The truth is, all of our emotions arise for a reason - bringing us valuable information and moving us into action - so when we refuse to feel our emotions and listen to what they are telling us, they don't go away.  Instead they just keep banging on the door, getting louder and causing more of a ruckus.

Can you think of anyone in your life that bottles up their anger, most of the time refusing to say how they feel or set healthy boundaries, but then occasionally exploding all over the place?  Just like a teakettle building up steam, exiling any emotion from our psyche has dire consequences.

Even if we are successful in “keeping the lid” on the emotion we are trying not to feel, the consequences will come out in other ways.  When any emotion isn’t allowed to do its job (when its message goes unheard), other emotions will step in to try to accomplish the same goal.  But because they are not designed to fulfill the same purpose, their attempt will inevitably fail, causing them to get stronger and stronger as they continue to try to help us.

When an emotion is allowed to flow, it will naturally come to the forefront of our psyche and then recede into the background again, once its job is done.  But when an emotion cannot do its job (either because we are ignoring it or because it is trying to fill in for an emotion that has been exiled) the result is - you guessed it - cycling emotions that just won’t ever stop.

This is why valencing emotions as “positive” or “negative” is a sure-fire way to become embroiled in a massive inner struggle.  In the long run, we always end up the loser of that struggle.

But there’s hope!

We can step out of that struggle entirely by learning to honor all of our emotions as a vital part of our inner genius. This is especially important for empathic people who naturally feel strongly, because when our emotions feel overwhelming, it is all too easy to fall into that struggle.

Keeping our heads above the water gets so much easier to do once we learn why each of our emotions arise within us, because we can then take the action that is required to honor that feeling - so that it will naturally recede into the background, until called upon again.

So by remembering these three things - pausing between feeling and acting, noticing when our emotions are speaking softly, and accepting that all of our emotions have a vital message to share - we can stop struggling with our emotions and start to hear their innate wisdom. 

This alone will shift our inner emotional dynamic, and it is the key to stepping out of stuck emotional patterns once and for all.

3 Secrets To Transforming Stuck Emotional Patterns
The Yin/Yang Dance of Grief and JoySadnessGriefHappinessJoyJessica MooreThu, 15 Feb 2018 22:56:14 +0000 we explore the beautiful dance between Joy and Grief, and how they are two sides of the same coin.  Joy lifts us up into the heavens, while grief pulls us down into the earth, and in this way they help us stay balanced.  And yet they are alike in how they both connect us to a greater sense of Oneness - because the Sacred lies in both directions.Imagine that you are holding a beautiful flower in your hand – the most exquisite treasure you have ever seen in your life.  Notice the radiant beauty of its colors, the perfection of each petal.

Now imagine that you are standing on an ocean beach, looking into a sunset that almost rivals the flower in its beauty.  Just take a moment to immerse yourself in the experience of this natural beauty.

Take a deep sigh, and experience yourself releasing that flower into the ocean.  Watch it slowly drift away into the sunset, until it is gone forever.  

How do you feel?

Most likely you are feeling joy, a wonderful, expansive emotion that arises when we behold something exquisite, when we experience the beauty of nature, or when we are being well loved and supported.

But perhaps you are also feeling something else.  

That sigh, watching that beauty disappear forever, might have evoked a heavier emotion along with the joy… sadness.

Surprised?  You shouldn’t be.  Happiness and sadness, joy and grief, often dance hand in hand within us.

Here’s why.

Joy lifts us up and dissolves our boundaries, opening us up to the Oneness of all things.  

In this way, it has a Yang quality, of lightness, growth, and expansiveness.

Joy is one of the most spiritual emotions, because it helps us feel connected to each other, and to all of life around us.

I probably don’t need to spend much time describing joy, as (hopefully) we are all familiar with it.  But we are often less familiar with joy’s counterpart, the other emotion that connects us with the Sacred:  grief.

We experience grief when we have lost something that we cannot get back – either when someone close to us has died, or when we experience the ending or death of something else important in our lives.

Grief helps us accept what has happened when we have lost something precious, and to adjust to the new, forever-changed reality.

This acceptance and time of readjustment is the sacred process of letting go.

Grief pulls us downward toward the Earth, grounding us, taking away our energy and inviting us to surrender.

Grief feels heavy, like a tremendous weight, crushing and immobilizing us.  In all of these ways it has a Yin-like quality, seemingly the direct opposite of joy.

But like joy, grief reminds us what is sacred, and connects us with something greater than ourselves.

When we are grieving a serious loss, it pulls us right out of normal space-time, into a liminal and otherworldly state of being.

Shamanic people would even say that grief is essential for the dead to be able to cross over, to rejoin the ancestors in their soul’s journey.  

Our tears create the river that carries them across to the other side, to an honored place where they can support us rather than haunt us.

Sadness and grief also come up in a softer way anytime we witness death around us and pause to honor what was lost, such as watching a funeral procession passing by.  

But unfortunately this honoring doesn’t automatically happen; it requires a choice on our part to allow our grief in, and choose to flow with it – even just for a moment.

Grieving those who we have lost brings us into contact with the other world, and connects us with those who are now on the other side.

Even though grief pulls us downward, and joy lifts us up, they both take us to the same place in the end.

Just like how the Yin and the Yang flow into each other and together create a whole circle, joy and grief are meant to flow and dance together in our psyche.

Believe it or not, the more we are willing to feel grief, the more we are able to feel joy.

Because joy arises in moments of deep connection and communion, and grief gives us a deep connection to those we’ve lost, diving into the deep waters of grief opens the door for us to feel more joy.

And because joy waits at the end of any powerful and meaningful journey, it often follows the life-affirming work of grieving.

Happiness also shows up in the midst of grief, since the entire purpose of happiness is to give us a much-needed break from the trials of life. You'll see this in people who are grieving, in the moments of humor and laughter between the tears.

And conversely, sadness is often present in genuine moments of joy - as we saw with the beautiful flower fading away into the sunset.

These “tears of happiness” prepare us to let these wonderful life moments go, because joy is always fleeting by nature.

And because grief helps us to ground and stay in our bodies, it balances the upward and dissociative lift that joy brings.

And that upward lift can feel like a sweet relief when we are feeling the weight of deep and heavy grief.

It can feel easier to simply rise up out of our bodies and dissociate when we feel the pressure of grief, rather than to accept its weight and allow it to bear us downward.

But when we choose this option too often, we never end up taking the time to feel our grief, to mourn our losses, and honor what has left us.

This causes real problems in our psyche because grief doesn’t just go away when it is unfelt; it stays, and builds over time as we experience more losses in life, like a lake being fed by rain.

But in this case, the bigger the lake of unfelt grief grows within us, the heavier it weighs us down, and the harder it becomes to feel any happiness and joy at all.

With Grief, this saying is never more true:  “the only way out is through.”

The more unfelt grief we carry, the less we are able to feel joy.  And because we often turn away from our grief in the pursuit of more joy, it follows that trying to always feel joy has the exact opposite result.

Despite what all the well-meaning but (emotionally) clueless spiritual teachers would have you believe, joy is not meant to stay around forever… and here’s why.

As I mentioned earlier, joy has a dissociative effect on us.  In the process of opening us up to the Oneness of life all around us, it pulls us upward and right out of our bodies.  But as you can imagine, that isn’t a healthy place to be all the time.

Experiences of joy are often called “peak experiences” because they feel so ecstatic.  And because it makes us feel so good, joy can actually become addicting!

Joy is meant to be special; to mark the most precious moments in our lives.  And even if we could feel it all the time, that would probably cause it to lose its magic.

Chasing after the “high” of Joy can lead us into an unbalanced state, similar to mania.

This is often connected to an underlying fear of “coming down”, because that requires feeling all the heavier, uncomfortable emotions that we’d rather not have to deal with.

Part of this “coming down” is our grounding, our ability to fully inhabit our bodies, which is intrinsically tied to our ability to feel sadness and accept loss.

So if we try to always stay “up,” we will become more and more ungrounded, and run the danger of becoming disconnected from reality.  

And this disconnection is a real trap, because it feels good, since happiness is the only emotion being felt!  So once a person is in that place, it can be hard to make a different choice.

This is why I feel we need to be careful with any philosophies or religious teachings that promote feeling happy or joyful all the time.  

Don’t get me wrong, happiness and joy are wonderful and important things to feel.  When we don’t feel enough of them, that is definitely something to address in our emotional life.

But seeking joy all the time actually makes it more elusive.

The true nature of all emotions is transitory; they are meant to come and go, to ebb and flow, in our authentic responses to life.

As counter-intuitive as it may seem, the best way to feel more of the emotions we want to feel is to let them come and go in their own time.

The more we allow our grief to flow through us, the more happiness and joy we feel, and the more joyful we feel, the more sadness and grief will move through us.

This dance between the Yang and Yin of our emotions is what keeps our hearts clean and clear of any stuck emotional energy.

The ancient Taoists understood the need for balance, and that all disease has its root in excess and deficiency.  And imbalance is exactly what happens when we avoid grief and try to feel joy all the time instead.

Our hearts want to feel, robustly and fully in response to all the highs and lows that life brings. And therein lies the key to a healthy emotional life.

How does this resonate with you? I would love to hear your stories of dancing with joy and grief in the comments below.

If you are interested in more articles like this, and you haven’t already signed up for The Unlocked Heart’s email newsletter, you can do so here. My mission is to raise the bar for emotional intelligence, through understanding the innate wisdom of our emotions.

And if you are struggling with blocked joy or stuck grief and are looking for one-on-one assistance, feel free to sign up for a free Emotional Breakthrough session with me. Your heart contains the key, but you may simply need a guide to help you find it.

The Yin/Yang Dance of Grief and Joy
Why There Are No Negative EmotionsGeneralJessica MooreThu, 11 Jan 2018 02:47:00 +0000 article challenges one of the most widely held views of emotions, for good reason.  It makes a compelling case for why even the most challenging emotions are necessary for our safety, our mental and emotional health, and our ability to function in the world.How often have you been warned of the dangers of “negative” emotions?  Whether from psychologists or New Age gurus, that phrase is repeated so often that I wouldn’t blame you at all if you took it as gospel.  I used to feel that way!

But what if the truth was radically different?  What if all emotions serve a vital purpose?  What if every one of them is an intrinsic part of your innate emotional wisdom?

In my exploration of emotions, and after studying the current research on the subject, I’ve come to a startling realization.

Whether or not you accept all of your emotions as valid - and are willing to feel them - is the single biggest decision that will make or break your psychological health.

A big claim?  Most definitely, but I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t have good reasons for it.  Here they are.

Our emotions connect us to our Authenticity.

Our emotions are essential for us to be able to navigate our daily environment, and to follow the path of our soul. 

Without them we wouldn’t be able to connect to our true passions, to know what we truly need and desire… and find the motivation to move in that direction.

Our intuition and instincts are informed by our full range of emotions, including the heavy and unpleasant ones.  Shutting down any of our emotions diminishes our connection to our innate wisdom.

This is why accepting all of our emotions as valid and valuable is so important.  It’s worth saying again:  the quickest way to block our ability to access our emotional wisdom is to consider half of our emotions as “negative” and something to avoid or change.


All emotions give us valuable information, and trying to simply clear away problematic emotions equates to denying the wisdom of our emotional body.

If we engage with what we authentically feel, our emotions will guide us toward what is right and true for us… and I feel this is what being authentic is all about.

But if you’re not particularly concerned with authenticity, here’s why this is also important for our psychological health.

Exiling one emotion causes others to go haywire.

When we allow ourselves to authentically feel our emotions, receive the message they are trying to give us, and take the actions that they are telling us are needed, then our emotions will naturally move on until they are needed again.  This is how the emotions are wired to work.

Hold on a minute!  You may be thinking of those particular emotions that you feel all the time, that just don’t seem to ever go away.  Those emotions sure aren’t moving on!

Here’s why that happens.

When certain emotions aren't allowed to do their job, the need - the reason why they arose in the first place - still remains. 

So what happens when the right emotion for the job isn’t allowed in?  Other emotions will step up in its place, but they won’t be able to meet the need because they weren’t designed for it.

This means that when certain emotions are exiled from our psyche, other emotions get louder and louder - not out of a desire to be a pain in the neck, but in a valiant and futile attempt to help us.  

This results in cycling emotions and stuck emotional patterns, that don't resolve even when we do all the right things.  As long as the emotion that is truly needed remains exiled, the cycling will continue.

And there is an even more important reason to pay attention to all of our emotions.

Our emotions keep us safe.

The idea that emotions like fear, anger, and shame are harmful and should be avoided, not only sets people up for serious psychological blocks and dysfunction, but in fact puts people in danger.  

To illustrate this, let’s look at a couple of specific emotions.

Our fear is intrinsically tied to our instinct for safety, and even running in the background it keeps us alert and aware of our surroundings.  Fear is what makes us safe drivers!  

People who have rejected their fear, whether consciously or not, lose their ability to discern danger, causing them to trust the wrong people and end up in all kinds of unsafe situations.  

Anger is another emotion that keeps us safe, just in a different way.

People whose anger is off-line, perhaps due to childhood messages that expressing anger in any form is unsafe and not allowed, lose their ability to set healthy boundaries and stand up for themselves.  

Imagine being on a date and going to your date’s apartment to watch a movie, but then they pressure you for an intimate encounter.  Imagine that they aren't respecting your "no", and start physically moving in on you.  Wouldn't you feel a certain amount of anger in that situation?  

I know I would!  And that anger is precisely what I would need to vigorously and effectively defend my honor.

Now imagine that you can't allow yourself to feel anger, because you’ve internalized the message that anger is bad and you must always be polite.  How well do you think you'd be able to stand up for yourself in this situation?  

Yikes, right?  And that’s not all.

Our emotions help us navigate our world.

Humans are social creatures.  We’ve been so successful as a species because of our ability to cooperate with each other, in vast and complex ways.

Emotions give us our ability to relate with each other, and are a massive part of our social intelligence.  This is not just borne out by psychological studies, but also by research on animals.  

As primatologist Frans de Waal says, we can’t “understand animal behavior without emotions, because emotions are the principles behind behavior.”

Our emotions have evolved as an intrinsic part of our biology, which is why many other animals exhibit the same emotions we do.  They evolved as survival strategies long before we ever became humans.

So when we lose the ability to feel our emotions, we lose our ability to function in the world.

Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio’s research shows how emotions play a vital role in social cognition and decision-making.  In his book Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain, he talks about one of his research subjects, a young woman who suffered a head trauma in early childhood that blocked her ability to feel shame, guilt, or embarrassment.

Sounds like a nice condition to have, wouldn't it?  Unfortunately her story does not have a happy ending.  

Because of her inability to feel shame, this young woman was insensitive, unreliable, disruptive, and a danger to herself and others.  She was intelligent, came from a good family, and had plenty of therapy and support - but she still couldn’t function socially, empathize with others, hold a job, or live independently.

Surprised?  This makes sense if you consider that healthy shame is what gives us the ability to understand the impact of our actions on other people, and to moderate our behavior accordingly.

Can you imagine a world without healthy shame, where no one was able to admit their mistakes and say “I’m sorry?”

We need to say goodbye to the idea of “negative” emotions.

Whether the emotion-shaming messages come from Christianity, Buddhism, New Age spiritual teachers, or our family of origin, they cause the same damage.  

It is even worse when these messages come from people in the personal-growth or healing professions, whose stated goal is helping people overcome their blocks and problematic patterns.  

Not only do emotional healing methods and guidance based on this "positive" and "negative" valencing not work very well (and sometimes cause more problems than they solve), often the client will come away from the experience feeling like it is their own fault when their problems don't actually resolve.

I believe this is tragic, and so unnecessary.  I know from experience that it is far easier to change our inner emotional dynamic by working with our emotions instead of against them.

If you would like to know how to do this, you’re in the right place.  In future articles I will share specific tips and how-tos for working with misbehaving emotions, and give an in-depth look at what each emotion does and why they can go haywire.

To avoid missing out on any of this, you can click on this link to sign up for my email newsletter.  You will also receive a free guide to Unlocking Your Emotional Genius, which will show you how to:  identify your current emotional strengths and challenges, discover the true purpose of each of the 17 emotions, and learn the 5 key skills for intelligently working with your emotions.

And I would love to hear how what I’ve said here resonates with your experience with your own emotions.  Please add your comments to the end of this post, and share if you feel it would be helpful to people you know.

Here’s to you and your inner emotional genius!

Cashin-Garbutt, April D. “Animal emotions and empathy.”, 5 December 2017.

Damasio, Antonio. Looking for Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain. Harcourt, 2003.

Why There Are No Negative Emotions