by Sheryl Paul | Mar 15, 2020 | Anxiety, Intrusive Thoughts |
Even as the human world of working, doing, achieving, and traveling slows down, in the natural world the birds are still singing, the trees are still blooming, the water is still flowing, our cats are still purring and our dogs are still wagging their tails, the earth...
by Sheryl Paul | Mar 8, 2020 | Anxiety, Intrusive Thoughts, Parenthood transitions |
I had a dream last week that broke my heart. I was in a large lecture hall looking for a place to sit before the class started. The students were already grouped together, and every time I sat down, I was rejected: someone moved away from me, another group...
by Sheryl Paul | Feb 9, 2020 | Anxiety, Dying/Death, Highly Sensitive Person, Holidays/Holy Days/Seasons, Intrusive Thoughts, Parenthood transitions |
There are times when it feels like the walls of the world are caving in, when the windows of psyche slam shut with curtains drawn so tight that no light gets in. The darkness can enfold and leave in a moment, or it can remain for a while. It’s during these times...
by Sheryl Paul | Feb 2, 2020 | Anxiety, Highly Sensitive Person, Intrusive Thoughts |
Because loss exists, love is a risk. Whether it’s a friend, a partner, a child, a family member, or a pet, when we love deeply we open ourselves to the risk of loss that accompanies love. When loving a child, you know that one day that child will leave, and that...
by Sheryl Paul | Oct 20, 2019 | Anxiety, Intrusive Thoughts |
Intrusive thoughts can be nothing short of torture. They enter on fear’s tail, flicking themselves into the mind like a flame cast from fear’s cauldron, and if you don’t have enough water in your well of Self, you’ll quickly find yourself...
by Sheryl Paul | Sep 22, 2019 | Anxiety, Intrusive Thoughts |
One of the many challenges of working with intrusive thoughts is that there’s often a grain of truth embedded inside the obsession. If we feed that grain by watering it with our attention, it grows into an unwanted weed of mythic proportions, taking over our...
by Sheryl Paul | Sep 15, 2019 | Anxiety, Intrusive Thoughts, Relationships |
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom,” said Kierkegaard as quoted by Mark Nepo, who continues with, “The truth is that every fresh experience has this dizziness of freedom that we have to move through. Every time we reach beyond what is familiar,...
by Sheryl Paul | Aug 18, 2019 | Anxiety, Intrusive Thoughts |
We all know that greens are healthy. We know that meditation can be life-changing. We know that breathwork is deeply healing and that yoga can be a pathway to profound change. We know that exercise is essential. We know that journaling is a powerful tool. We know it,...
by Sheryl Paul | Aug 4, 2019 | Anxiety, Holidays/Holy Days/Seasons, Intrusive Thoughts, Transitions - General |
Life moves along in flows and eddies. The more you attend to your inner world and heal the long-standing and deep-seated pain and trauma that live at the root of intrusive thoughts, the longer the stretches of eddies and the time you’ll stand amongst the reeds,...
by Sheryl Paul | Jul 28, 2019 | Anxiety, Intrusive Thoughts, Open Your Heart, Relationships |
Once again, I turn to the poet and mystic Mark Nepo and The Book of Awakening for gems of wisdom about the stones that block our hearts from fully loving: “It seems this is the never-ending work of relationship, each of us in our own time and way moving the...
