Tag: self-compassion

For years I often heard people say that you have to go through grief and pain, you can’t go around it, you can’t go above it, you have to go through it. For years I didn’t understand what that meant. We live in an incredibly emotionally avoidant culture which then leads to chronic mental emotional health struggles, high addiction and disconnection from self and others among other symptoms. 

In order to move through grief or pain a person must create a safe space for emotions to build. Like a wave on a beach, emotions need to be able to build and crash safely on the shore before they can recede out and become calm again. Instead of allowing the natural flow, we often dam up the water as high as we can to keep it from crashing, but then when it inevitably breaks the dam, and the lifetime of suppressed emotions can come cascading and flooding ...

Body First

“Sorry” I said as I muted myself and leaned out of the camera’s view during my virtual therapy session. A ferocious sneeze escaped and I blew my nose with the force that comes with being a week sick. I unmuted myself to re-join the session and my therapist looked at me and says “No need to apologize, Kati. Body first.” 

“Huh?” I replied, not entirely sure what she meant. She proceeded to explain that I have no need to apologize for my body simply being a body. “Sneezing, snot, using the bathroom…. These are merely bodily functions of all people with bodies and don’t require an apology” she explained.  I laughed and agreed that it was odd that I’d automatically apologize for blowing my nose… I was, after all, recovering from Covid and congestion was unavoidable. And yet my apology had slipped out faster than I could stop it. It had actually felt like I was being conside ...

I have been learning a lot about shame recently. I think if asked, we can all describe it. It’s when we believe not only that we did something wrong, but we believe we ARE wrong. These days, we can feel it anywhere. We post something on Instagram and someone critiques or condemns us for posting it.  We say something in a group of friends and people laugh or make fun of us for saying it. We stand up to our family on something we feel is wrong or have differing beliefs about, and they shoot us down. Even if we have a health crisis or feel like our body fails us, that can also be shame. Like I said, we can feel it anywhere, anytime, and from anyone.

There are two things that I feel combat shame or at least help us identify it and help us learn to distance ourselves from it, the first being self-compassion. This is quite different the self-esteem. Self-esteem “refers to our sense of self-worth, perceived value, or how ...