Trust Yourself « 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...

The Art of Making Decisions

By Sheryl Paul, on April 15th, 2018

Our culture fails to teach us the essential skills we need to navigate through life successfully in so many ways. As I discuss often on this site, it fails to teach us about healthy, real love. It fails to teach us about how to feel our feelings and work with our thoughts. It fails to guide us through the potholes and landmines of transitions. And it fails to teach us how to make decisions, both big and small.

Not only does the culture fail to offer useful decision-making skills but it suggests techniques that often truncate and sabotage the process. A prime example of this is the pros and cons list, which is the main tool the culture offers for trying to make a major life decision. On the surface there’s nothing inherently wrong with making such a list, but when we look deeper we see that it’s a way … Click here to continue reading...

Caring What Other People Think

By Sheryl Paul, on April 8th, 2018

How would your life be different if you didn’t care what other people thought? How might your relationship, your job, and your day-to-day functioning be different if you weren’t weighed down by others’ opinions? How might you peel and crack out of the shells of your insecurity and arrive more closely at the essence of who you are if you weren’t worried about others’ judgement? What would happen if you made decisions based on the inviolable knowledge of your intrinsic worthiness instead of based on the constantly moving target of external approval?

Caring what other people think is a common theme that shows up in my work, and it appears in a variety of ways both for those in a relationship and those who are single. For those in a relationship, especially those suffering from relationship anxiety, it most commonly shows up as caring what other people think of one’s … Click here to continue reading...

Take Back Your Gold

By Sheryl Paul, on October 15th, 2017

Last Monday, after a typical Colorado October snowstorm, my sons and I drove into town to serve dinner to the homeless. Consistent with this time of year, the snow started to melt just hours after it fell, and what was left was a stunning display of beauty where the golds and reds of autumn kissed the snow-covered foothills in the foreground with the pure white Rocky Mountains jutting up above it all. The juxtaposition of colors took my breath away and shook off the last shroud of the gray morning that had settled into my soul. As the sun broke through and added another layer of gold to the landscape, my heart did the same.

As we drove through the breathtaking beauty and I thought about the meeting of autumn and winter, I pondered for the thousandth time why I love working in the realm of transitions. It’s because these … Click here to continue reading...

World Anxiety

By Sheryl Paul, on October 8th, 2017

Photo by Everest Finn – taken 13 miles above Earth

One of the byproducts of being a highly sensitive person prone to anxiety is that you tend to take on others’ pain and stories. This is particularly true if you had an enmeshed relationship with a parent growing up and didn’t learn to solidify the borders of your skin but instead became a porous sponge that absorbed the emotional world of your parent. But the tendency to take on others’ pain and stories is a common struggle for many people regardless of early relationships and speaks to being both sensitive and not having established a full well of Self. For when the waters in your inner well are low, there’s nothing to absorb the pings and bangs of life: every story pings and every pain bangs on those dry, hollow walls.

This often shows up in my work around relationship … Click here to continue reading...