We live in a culture that promotes striving, grinding, and achieving.  We often measure our worth based on how hard we push ourselves to grow and accomplish in a day, season, or year.  When faced with a choice of whether to take on a new challenge, we feel pressured to dive in.  The consequence of choosing an alternative is guilt, shame, or feelings of being a failure. While we know[…]

emotions, explostions, self-soothing

We all have moments when we lose our cool. It’s the end of a long, tiring day, and when your kids won’t cooperate with the bedtime routine, you find yourself yelling and slamming doors.  Or maybe you’re keyed up watching your favorite sports team, and when they get a bad call by the ref, you throw your phone to the ground and shatter the screen.  This is what we call[…]

Mother’s Day is a holiday meant to honor and celebrate motherhood.  It’s supposed to be an opportunity to shower moms with signs of appreciation and love.  Yet many mothers find ourselves working as hard as ever on this holiday, hosting events and accommodating everyone else’s schedules and needs.  We expect moms to do it all, all the time, for everyone else without having needs of our own.  It should be[…]

altruistic caregiver

Are you always worrying about how to meet others’ needs? Do you constantly try to anticipate everyone’s moods and preferences so you can manage them? Does all this mental and emotional work come at the expense of your own needs? You’re not alone. In fact, many people struggle to honor their own feelings, opinions, and preferences. They are constantly ignoring or dismissing their own inner voice in order to try[…]