How to Build Emotional Awareness: Feelings as Feedback

Building emotional awareness requires us to be in touch with our feelings, and not avoid them. When it comes to negative emotions, no one likes to be in pain and so there is a tendency to push our feelings down. Our avoidance could also be that we don’t like being seen as “emo” on the assumption that we need to appear strong. However, when we are in the habit of suppressing our emotions for too long, a host of problems can occur; ranging from depression and anxiety to substance abuse.

After realising about the importance of getting to know ourselves, we may encounter problems with accessing our emotions at first. It was certainly what happened to me. For a start at one stage, I was not able to distinguish and to identify what I was feeling. In fact, I had to ask for help.

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Mindset Journal for Women: How to Practice Positive Thinking

How the “Poor Me” Syndrome Is Synonymous with Poverty Consciousness

For your awareness, to constantly think “poor me” is to operate in poverty consciousness.

Do you go over “poor me”, “poor me” and “poor me” in your mind?

You could also be repeating the same thing to the people that you meet too.

“Poor me” is akin to having a victim mentality. You are in self-pity. A “poor me” syndrome arises especially when you are constantly pointing blame outwards. It could be the fault of your grandmother, father, the government, the economy and so on. It is always the fault of someone or something else except yours.

[Side-note] This post is updated as the content is still relevant today.
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What Are Glimmers and How You Can Find Them

Glimmers are the opposite of triggers.

Glimmers are moments that act as cues for self-regulation and for soothing our nervous system. They are tiny moments where we feel relaxed, safe, assured and connected. In contrast triggers cause us to feel threatened. When we are triggered badly, our fight-flight-freeze response can get excessively activated and our nervous system becomes deregulated. 

The concept of glimmers first came from Polyvagal theory.  The theory was introduced by Stephen Porges in 1995 where we learn about how our autonomic nervous system is constantly on the lookout for cues to determine if they are dangerous. “Glimmers” is coined by Deb Dana, a licensed clinical social worker who specialises in complex trauma and also the author of The Polyvagal Therory in Therapy, as a way to help us shift out of survival mode. 

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How to Practice Loving Self-Acceptance

Practising loving self-acceptance is not something that may come naturally. In fact, it could be a key life lesson that some of us. You may find yourself attracting various experiences that involve this important aspect of what it means to embrace yourself totally.

Many of us long to be accepted for who we are. And so, we go about seeking validation and approval from others. However, the crux is that if we cannot accept ourselves, we cannot expect others to accept us too. Without any self-acceptance, we live in constant fear of being rejected.

“A man cannot be comfortable without his own approval.” – Mark Twain

I find it great to learn from movies too.  One of the movies that I watched with my children was Wreck-it Ralph show. Initially, I had found the plot rather slow moving. And so I was not paying full attention to it. But as the movie wore on, I discovered that there were valuable lessons on self-acceptance.
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Reparenting Yourself: What Does It Mean and How to Get Started

What does reparenting yourself mean?

Reparenting yourself simply means healing your inner child and giving your inner child the love and the guidance and support that you didn’t receive when you were young, in the present. 

[Update] Check out my new online course on How to Reparent Yourself. 

Build Emotional Mastery: What is Emotional Labeling and Differentiation

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10 Tips for Conscious Reparenting of Your Inner Child

Do you often wish that you had received adequate love, guidance, support from your mum or dad when you were young?

It could be that you’re now realising that part of the challenging issues you have today are related to your childhood. Perhaps you have experienced emotional neglect in the past. You find yourself still longing for love and assurance even today.

This is not to blame any of your parents. After all, they parented you in the only way they knew how. They could have been brought up in the same or similar ways themselves. Yet, what remains is that your younger self or inner child still feels the need to have that love and acceptance. 

Well, it is not too late. You can help yourself by addressing these needs in the now. Addressing unresolved needs helps you to build emotional resilience, strengthen self-confidence and esteem, and to undertake personal responsibility.

With all that you know now, with the higher consciousness that you are, you can offer parenting love, warmth and guidance to your inner child. Continue reading

10 Automatic Negative Thoughts that You Need to Let Go of

Do you find yourself having negative thoughts that seem to pop in automatically? 

Our minds are often programmed to think more negatively that positively. Automatic negative thoughts are often cognitive distortions. The American Psychological Association defines cognitive distortions as “faulty or inaccurate thinking, perception or belief.” For some people, cognitive distortions are a pattern of thinking that can lead to chronic anxiety, depression, and behavioural problems such as substance abuse.

Most of us have not been trained to observe our thoughts. It’s possible to be more aware about what our behaviour is like or even how we are feeling. Yet, what is driving our behaviour are our feelings that are also influenced by our thoughts. 

Cognitive distortions formed the subject of study by Dr Aaron Beck. He proposed that we challenge our irrational and faulty thinking. Once we can break free from them, we are in a better position to change our behaviour. 

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EFT Tapping Circle: What Are Group Borrowing Benefits

“Borrowing Benefits” is one of the most profound discoveries in EFT tapping circles. It happens when we come together in a group to clear negative emotions or limiting benefits. “Borrowing Benefits” is the discovery that simply watching other participants do EFT on their issues, while tapping along with them, reduces the emotional intensity of our own issues.It is as if we are “borrowing” the positive energetic shifts, even though we are not directly working on our own. 

To begin with, our issues may or may not be the same as what another member of the group is going through. However, just by observing and tapping along on the issues that belong to another group member, we can potentially experience a reduction in the stress or tension that we have in relation to our own issues. This phenomena is also pretty much aligned with the concepts that “everything is energy” and that we are all inter-connected.