Relationships | Conscious Transitions

Grace Through Uncertainty

By Sheryl Paul, on September 9th, 2018

“Whether through birds in snow, or geese honking in the dark, or through the brilliant wet leaf that hits your face the moment you are questioning your worth, the quiet teachers are everywhere. When we think we are in charge, their lessons dissolve as accidents or coincidence. But when we’re brave enough to listen, the glass that breaks across the room is offering us direction that can only be heard in the roots of how we feel and think.”- Mark Nepo

Uncertainty is part of life. Part of the human condition is to be aware of and struggle with uncertainty, yet few people inherently know how to live with it in a graceful way. Left to its own devices, and in the absence of a culture that teaches us how to create footholds that help us anchor into life in healthy ways, the mind will choose the path of least … Click here to continue reading...

Health Anxiety, Money Anxiety, and the Fear of Loss

By Sheryl Paul, on August 26th, 2018

As highly sensitive people we’re physiologically wired to look for what’s wrong or amiss. While this hypervigilence once served us and our community extremely well when we were living in the outback or jungle and we were the first to scan the horizon to notice the slight wisp of smoke that signaled that a band of marauders was a few miles a way or the slight change in grass the indicated a tiger around the next bend, this evolutionary advantage can feel like a curse in modern culture. It’s fair to say that at least one element of modern anxiety is our evolutionary advantage, the part of our brains that kept entire villages alive, left hanging. As it’s primary job has been taken away, it now swerves into the path of least resistance, which often looks like scanning the inner horizon for danger: Am I with the right partner? (Is … Click here to continue reading...

To See Beyond Attraction

By Sheryl Paul, on August 12th, 2018

There comes a time in a relationship when, if you’ve done your inner work, you see beyond all externals into the essence of a human being. Clients who are struggling with the attraction spike often ask me, “I’m constantly checking to see if I’m attracted to my partner, and when I’m not I get a pit in my stomach. Will the day ever come when I look at him/her and just find her attractive?” Not only will you find your partner attractive, but you’ll stop checking. At some point, when you’ve worked enough with fear walls and rejection/projection layers, your partner is just your partner, and when you look at him or her you’ll look through eyes that see at the level of being.

This reminds me of something a woman named Jill, who I interviewed for my book and again for my e-course, said when I asked how she … Click here to continue reading...

When Infatuation Leads To Dead Butterflies

By Sheryl Paul, on July 29th, 2018

Love is a verb. This is one of the great truths about love that our culture fails to teach, one that, even when we understand the principle, we need to remember it and practice it over and over again. I think of marriage or any long-term, committed relationship with a willing, open partner as an opportunity to practice loving – the active form of the verb – day after day and year after year until it becomes second nature. The culture teaches us that we’re supposed to know how to love from the day one. What that really means is that we think we’re supposed to feel in love early on. This isn’t possible. Like any skill, it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at loving. From the practice the feelings arise – a nice frosting on the cake of love – but we don’t practice loving so that… Click here to continue reading...

The Scars of First Heartbreak

By Sheryl Paul, on July 22nd, 2018

There’s nothing like the first. The first family. The first friend. The first kiss. The first job. The first baby. The first heartbreak.

The first time or experience or relationship lays the groove of a blueprint for how we navigate later, similar experiences. Our first experience of a family that occurs in our family of origin creates a groove in psyche called “family”, much like the groove in a vinyl album. When the needle of a later experience sets down on the groove of “family”, you will automatically think about your family of origin, and the overarching feeling of what it was like to be in your family will color your expectations of current or future family. Likewise, our first experience of marriage is often our parents’ marriage; what we learned, saw, and absorbed there affects our expectations, hopes, and fears around our own marriage possibly more than any other … Click here to continue reading...