Popular culture is fascinated with attachment styles, but attachment experts say it’s less of a style, and more of a location on the attachment continuum. We are all somewhere on the same path, depending on the health of our attachment to ourselves and others.  I would like to propose a new metric to identify where we fall on this spectrum, because I’ve found an accurate way to assess emotional health: our ability to self-nurture.  Children who receive consistent nurture from

The best way out is always through. We live in a culture that does not place any value on pain. If we feel pain, we rush to numb it with painkillers or antidepressants but not ask why it’s there and what it’s attempting to communicate. We see the dangerous consequences of this most in people who have neuropathy, such as many diabetics, who no longer have feeling in their feet.

22 years ago, I was pregnant and determined to have a home birth. I attended hypnobirthing classes to learn how to do the impossible: relax throughout the birth process. I listened to meditations where a soothing voice walked me through the process of relaxing every muscle while visualizing my baby peacefully journeying through the birth canal. The voice reminded me that I was not to resist the pressure in my body, but embrace it, “relaxing as if my life depended upon it.” In

It’s said we have to understand the enemy in order to beat him. So today we’re going to understand shame, the enemy of all humanity. Let’s do some reconnaissance  Shame’s greatest strategy is to divide and conquer. This begins by dividing us from our very self. Shame creates a division within us keeping us from becoming whole, exiling us from ourselves. When this takes place, instead of being able to trust ourselves and give ourselves our approval, we find ourselves perpetual

OCD develops when we dissociate from our anger and it takes on a life of its own, becoming something that feels scary and out of control. This is why OCD entails so many checking behaviors – we’re trying to gain a semblance of control over something we refuse to acknowledge or be responsible for: the anger at people in our lives.  OCD often manifests as fear of violence and death. It could entail fear of germs, knives, someone breaking into our house, running people over with

What most creates a human with a good heart, is one who has learned they matter. This is a child who is consistently seen, both figuratively and literally, with adequate eye contact, by an adult who mirrors him. This is a child who is consistently heard, by an attachment figure who listens and recognizes what the child feels, not dismissing it. These experiences are the embodiment of empathy, and the child internalizes the empathy, which makes him naturally empathize with oth

Years ago I read an autobiography I found in a free library by Maureen McCormick, the famous child actress who played Marsha in the Brady Bunch sitcom of the early 70’s. One of the most surprising things to me was Maureen’s somatic response to the death of her mother. She’d always been thin and fit, but when her mom died, she suddenly couldn’t stop eating and she gained an incredible amount of weight. She admitted to feeling like there was a void inside her that she was tryin

I recently watched a reel in which Native American spirituality is contrasted with conventional Christianity. The speaker showed how modern Christianity begets dependence on others, such as a Messiah and people of the cloth, while Native spirituality teaches taking responsibility for yourself, the earth, and relationships with those around you.

Healthy people are like a grain of wheat, with an outer bran layer, defending the precious germ, inside. When the right conditions appear, such as good soil with enough moisture, adequate sunlight and warmth, the wheat will naturally shed its outer bran layer, and the germ will start to germinate, sending out roots.