HSP « Conscious Transitions

At the Heart of Anxiety

By Sheryl Paul, on April 22nd, 2018

“The final stage of healing is using what happens to you to help other people. That is healing in itself.” – Gloria Steinem

“Why me?” people often ask when they’re dragged into the underworld of anxiety in any form. “Why do they have it so easy? Why does it look like everyone else glides through life when I struggle?”

I’ve written many times on this site and in my courses about the gift of being highly sensitive and the gems that are gleaned from doing our healing work. And I’ve touched on the final stage of healing, which Gloria Steinem succinctly summarizes above, which is to take what you’ve learned and help others. The two are intimately linked, for it’s those who embrace the gifts of their sensitivity, which means attending to anxiety, who are more easily able to live life in alignment with their true selves. One of the … Click here to continue reading...

Does Relationship Anxiety Ever End?

By Sheryl Paul, on January 21st, 2018

Among the many questions that dart through the mind plagued by relationship anxiety, the one that can cause either hope or despair is, “Will this anxiety ever end? The short answer is yes: the acute anxiety that you’re experiencing – the one that wakes you in the night and causes you to lose your appetite, will end when you receive accurate information and can douse the flames of “What’s wrong with me?” with a good splash of truth-water. But the shelf-life of deeper layers of the anxiety are directly correlated to your ability and willingness to pull the projection off your partner and take full responsibility for your well-being. The equation is simple: if anxiety is a call from soul to wake up and heal then the depth of our healing is in direct proportion to the depth of our willingness to hear and heed the call.

That said, every … Click here to continue reading...

Holy Fear

By Sheryl Paul, on October 22nd, 2017

We hear and read a lot of fear these days in psychological and spiritual circles. Mostly, fear is painted in a negative way as the energy that we have to wrestle with and overcome in order to live a life of joy. Most of the statements and quotes we read about fear pin it in the position of the enemy, the obstacle, the dark road. These quotes are accurate, but they’re only talking about one kind of fear. There’s another face of fear that needs and deserves our attention.

Recently, while reading Rabbi Naomi Levy’s book, “Einstein and the Rabbi”, the phrase “holy fear” leapt out at me from the page. She writes:

“There are two divine attributes that emanate toward us: they are love and fear. Love and fear are always keeping each other in check like yin and yang. Love is an outpouring that flows from the soul, … Click here to continue reading...

Bored and Lonely

By Sheryl Paul, on August 27th, 2017

I shared the following client dialogue several weeks ago in a post called The Critical Moment to Break Free From Relationship Anxiety:

“What am I trying to escape?” my clients asks.

“Your feelings. Not the feelings that are attached to your intrusive thought and which you project onto your husband but your core, fundamental feelings of being human: loneliness, boredom, emptiness.”

“So all of the mental torture is because I don’t want to let myself feel that one moment of boredom?” she asks with more than a little skepticism in her voice.

“Amazingly, yes. It’s harder than we think to let ourselves feel that moment of boredom or emptiness without wanting to escape. When we really let ourselves feel it, it’s a death moment. It doesn’t last, of course, and the more we practice breathing into our painful moments, the easier it becomes. But we really have to train ourselves … Click here to continue reading...

Oh, So That's How You Love!

By Sheryl Paul, on August 13th, 2017

There have been countless times over the many years of my marriage when my husband will say something that makes me feel loved or do something that gets us back on track when we’ve been in a negative feedback loop and I’ll think, “Oh, so that’s how you love!” It could be something as small as walking me to the door to say goodbye instead of being satisfied with a kitchen goodbye or apologizing with a hug and an “I’m sorry” instead of just the words, and I’ll look at him with a certain amount of awe because he seems to know innately these simple ways of loving and repairing that I’ve had to learn. My husband has shared with me that he also marvels at certain ways that I intuitively know how to love.

This is how it goes in marriage: we teach each other how to love. We … Click here to continue reading...