Trauma

Being open to who we are, exactly as we are in this moment, requires a stance of gentleness toward ourselves. This is what it means to befriend the self. We treat ourselves with the same sweetness we would a friend.

Loving-kindness meditation is a technique used to condition one’s habitual responses, emotions and mind states toward greater warmth and caring for self and others. What we feed grows. By increasing our daily diet of love, compassion, and other positive emotions we nourish character development and psychological growth.

Here are some of the most common anxiety-fueled thought patterns, plus some specific ways you can recognize and dispute them. If some of these sound familiar to you, put them in your mental tool kit so you can take them out when you need them.

When attention is strong, we can simply do what we are doing, moment to moment. If we are peeling an orange, we may notice the stickiness of the juice, the smell of the orange oil, and a host of other sensations

Children, being wonderfully creative, are capable of conjuring unlimited ways to maintain the attachment bonds that fend off anxiety. As we grow older theses clever coping strategies become internalized. In other words, they become unconscious blueprints of being.

It is the nature of the human mind to be subdivided into parts. We all have them. Parts exist from birth, either in potential or in actuality.