Intrusive Thoughts
I’ve heard every intrusive thought under the sun, so please know that whatever thought has you in its stronghold, you’re not alone. When you understand that intrusive thoughts are messengers from the unconscious and are not to be taken at face value, your relationship to these debilitating thoughts will completely shift and you’ll be able to see them as arrows pointing to areas inside that need your attention instead of as evidence of truth. Then the real healing begins.
Intrusive Thoughts
As much as I talk about intrusive thoughts on this site and in my courses, I've never formally defined them. And, truthfully, in all of my training over the years I've never come across a precise definition of intrusive thoughts. Furthermore, despite the fact that...
The Architecture of Anxiety and Intrusive Thoughts
Many of my clients suffer from the hell-realm of intrusive or unwanted thoughts. Thoughts like, "What if I'm a pedophile?" or "What if I'm a mass murderer?" or "What if I contract a deadly disease?" or "What if I don't love my partner enough (or at all)?" parade...
The Gift of Intrusive Thoughts
I like to start every article that I write about anxiety, worry, or intrusive thoughts by saying that I hold a different view than most people about the function of anxiety in that I see it as a gift. I know firsthand how miserable it is to suffer from anxiety, but I...
What is “The Work” of Breaking Free From Anxiety?
A coaching client recently said to me, "You talk a lot about doing "the work", and I wondered for so long what "the work" was. I thought that if I understood anxiety intellectually I would feel better. And the first time I went through the course I did feel better for...
Where Anxiety Hangs Its Hat
Anxiety can hang its hat on almost any hook. It can focus on relationships, fertility, parenting, health, the world, money, career, death. Within each of these topics, there are endless sub-topics that lure anxiety into its lair. If we're talking about relationship...
Caught in a Thought
A coaching client recently shared the following (shared here with her permission): A few weeks ago, I found myself obsessively thinking about a situation with a friend of mine - someone to whom I’ve given my power for many years. I was completely caught by this theme...
Caught in the Story
Our stories form a crystal cave of stalactites and stalagmites in our minds, a cool chamber that seduces us with the promise that if we spend enough time there we will divine our answers. How beautiful this cave looks! How many promises it offers! And how familiar...
Feeding the Demons of Intrusive Thoughts
One of the key elements to breaking free from the grip of intrusive thoughts and, thus, the stronghold of relationship anxiety, is to learn how to stop feeding the thoughts. This is not an easy task. In fact, as anyone who works in the inner realms well knows,...
Anxiety: Ambassador of Wholeness
"Dreams come in the service of health and wholeness." - Jeremy Taylor, author of "The Wisdom of Your Dreams" A few weekends ago I attended one of the most inspiring, nourishing, revelatory workshops of my life. It was a workshop on dreamwork facilitated by the...
“What If I’m Too Young?”
The spike of the week from my clients and readers who struggle with relationship anxiety comes in at: "What if I'm too young? What if I haven't met my match yet and I'm just deluding myself to think I could have met my person at a young age? What if there's someone...
Death, Eventually
There it is, beneath the thoughts, the chatter, the doubt, the irritation, the barriers against love in all of its varied manifestations: the fear of loss, the fear of change, the excruciating awareness that we will, all of us, ultimately, be separated from the ones...