Articles
Written reflections from Robert Strock and the Awareness That Heals community.
-
There’s a Time for Feelings and a Time for Wisdom
Follow your feelings when they lead you to well-being but absolutely follow your wisdom guidance when your feelings aren’t leading to what’s most needed. Can you see the tendency most of us have to let our feelings rule our inner lives? If you look closely, you will very likely see that your feelings are a…
-
How Einstein Can Help You Care For Your Feelings
How do you cope with difficult feelings? When you try to make yourself feel better, do you try to force yourself to change your feelings by demanding they obey what you think or want to feel? How has giving yourself a hard time when you’re feeling too anxious, angry, depressed, empty, or confused worked out…
-
Guiding Ourselves by Asking “What Does My Wisdom Suggest?”
How much do you practice clearly seeing your challenging feelings as a first step? I’m not talking about feelings like “I don’t feel good” or vague ones like “I’m feeling down.” In fact, please take a moment to find some of your commonly felt feelings in our Introspective Guides that will help you identify 75…
-
How To Express What You Need Instead Of What You Don’t Like
One of the foundational ways we disconnect from those we are intimate with or just those in our world is the tendency to express our dissatisfactions more than what we would find satisfying or fulfilling. Take a look at how often you might say these following common statements: • “I really wish you didn’t _____.” …
-
How to Use Your Tone Of Voice to Develop Intimacy And Healing
What’s tone of voice? It’s the way you speak to another person — in sound and often with hidden meaning, the way you express yourself. It reflects our innermost motivations, reactions, and, when applicable, our character and wisdom — even when we aren’t aware of our wisdom or don’t have access to it yet. Is…
-
How Confusion is often a Sign of Depth and Potential for Fulfillment
Confusion is so often thought to be a negative feeling, one that is hard to tolerate. In our culture, it’s a feeling we are most frequently averse towards. Today, let’s take a look at confusion as a feeling and how we can support ourselves in changing our attitude, response, and understanding of it. We can…
-
How Can Our Best Realistic Effort Help Us Connect With Ourselves and Others?
When we say to others (or even ourselves), “I did my best.” Do we really, truly, in our hearts believe that? Even though you may know that your best differs every day for different reasons, you might unwittingly demand that you do better than your best efforts. When we think of our best, we should…
-
How can you make insecurity your friend?
Almost all of us have dealt with insecurity in some way. Yet, more often than not, we consider insecurity undesirable or embarrassing and, at times, even shameful. I’ve noticed that insecurities don’t make their way out into the therapy room until much later. Insecurity is so disliked, and we often subject ourselves to self-criticism wittingly…
-
The Unintended Consequences of Mislabeling Our Thoughts and Emotions
One of the greatest contributions we can make in our lives (to both the world and to ourselves) is to stay dedicated and loyal to the truth in what we think and say. Although that sounds quite simple, it requires a good deal of contemplation to really have a chance of it becoming an art…
-
How Challenging Feelings Can be a Guidepost to Our Needs
Often, it’s quite hard to tolerate or accept our most troublesome feelings. That’s why we use our capacity to seethat these feelings are the deepest source of our suffering. However, our negative reactions to these difficult feelings are what causes the more sustaining pain and suffering than the original feelings themselves, although that’s rarely obvious…