When “Helping” Becomes Enabling: Breaking the Cycle of Dependency
Like most people, my journey to the land of enabling was fueled by the kindest intentions. I was trying to help a friend, which then grew into trying to save that friend. But after years of “helping” and “saving,” I was the one going under, and it was myself that I needed to save. As […]
Your Truest Friend Resides Within Your Own Heart
As we age it seems that fighting with friends becomes less necessary or even possible. There are fewer matters worth fighting about and even fewer worth risking the friendship over. That said, I recently had a real fight with a dear friend. The fight arose because my friend had decided that I had done something […]
Overcoming Your Fear of Feelings
I recently attended a panel discussion on the topic of happiness. Early on in the dialogue, one of the panelists addressed what he considered the mistaken way that most people think about happiness, namely, as a state that is free from pain or difficulty. He explained that we need to view happiness as a state […]
How to Look Out for Yourself
There are times in life when things fall apart, when we lose something deeply important, something that made us feel connected, grounded or safe. Sometimes a lot of things fall apart at the same time. There are times in life, for everyone, when it feels like all our safety nets get cut, and we are […]
How to Love a Narcissist Without Losing Yourself
My 10-year-old was invited to a party this weekend, a camp reunion sleepover, given by one of her closest friends. Unfortunately, this same weekend, she has an event that she can’t and doesn’t want to miss, a competition for which she has trained diligently and for many months. The other little girl is very […]
Has Your Ego Slipped Inside Your Witness?
Orange was the new black. Now mindfulness has trumped orange and is indeed, the newest black. Talk in social media is that everyone is practicing it, “doing” mindfulness, becoming spiritual. Sounds good! Becoming aware and conscious of what is happening in the present moment, both inside and outside our body, is a powerful and life […]
How to Stop Judging Our Own Desires
So many of us judge the worthiness of our activities based on the nature of the activity itself rather than the intention/opportunity for growth behind it. We decide that we want to study jewelry making, folk guitar, pottery, balloon-twisting, baking, or anything else. Soon after, we ask “What’s the purpose of doing that?” “Aren’t I […]
Stop the Train and Let Me Into My Life!
Stop the train, i want to get off! This is the refrain I hear all day in my office. The feeling is that life is whizzing by outside a window and needs to somehow stop so you can actually experience it. What is the cause of this? We are not experiencing our life because we […]
More Reliable Than happiness
There is a state of being that is far more reliable than happiness. There is a place inside us that is okay regardless of whether the situation in our life is okay. I call this place wellness. We are well when we are no longer reliant upon our circumstances in order to feel grounded and good. We […]