Category: Breathe

A healthy, regulated nervous system is vital for good mental health. The nervous system is responsible for discerning our general wellbeing and it warns us when we’re no longer safe. For example, we may be experiencing fear or heightened anxiety in the face of a confrontational conversation with someone we love. We may feel that by our hearts racing, having trouble thinking clearly, shortness of breath, or wanting to run away as we’re having that conversation. Other times, we may shut down, disconnect or ghost people in order to avoid a challenging situation. In any of those scenarios, our nervous system is experiencing some sort of dysregulation through overstimulation or shut down. We do not feel safe and our nervous system is working properly by letting us know and moving us into the primal, protective part of our brain. 

Maybe we face that fear and address the challenging conversation a ...

“It’s fine.”  “Everything is fine.”  “I’m fine.”  Have you ever strung together these three sentences and thought to yourself, “shoot, I think I might not be fine”. 

About a year ago I was in a car accident that resulted in emergency surgery, a stay in the trauma center at the hospital, and a long recovery (in addition to other challenges). It was the most challenging and scary time in my life. I didn’t think that I was going to make it, and yet I would find myself telling my loved ones who came to visit me, “It’s fine.”  “Everything is fine.”  “I’m fine.” 

Why is it so hard to admit that sometimes we are not fine? It has taken me a while to figure out why I was so desperately pushing myself to be fine. Though I wanted those words to be true, what I wanted more than anything was for my loved ones to think and feel that those words were true.

Whet ...

Low battery! The alert pops up on your phone after you have been scrolling Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok, and the many different social media platforms. You may have intended to only spend 5 minutes scrolling which has turned into 15 minutes and then to an hour. You look up at the time and realize how long you have spent scrolling.

You may feel drained from scrolling and seeing all the different things that the people you follow are doing while you watched from a screen. You may feel unplugged from the world you are living in and in the world that social media is sharing with you. You might suffer from FOMO (fear of missing out) or get jealous of the things that other people are doing. It is easy to start comparing our lives to others while scrolling. Most of what we see on social media is
created and not the reality of the people on the other side of the phone. We realize that we have been staring at our screens for hours on end. When ...