All posts tagged: Emotions

10 Ways to Calm Your Internal Mama Bear

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The other night I got mad. Real mad. I came across something online, something someone said about a person I know, and the mama bear in me raged. I wanted to act. I wanted to chase someone up a tree. I had my response and was ready to throw it like a pine cone. Anger is an emotion we all have and we constantly are learning to navigate. I grew up around several individuals who had tempers and therefore I associate anger and being upset as “bad” emotions. I’m still learning how to be better at being mad. It is natural for things to upset us. It is okay for things to upset us. It’s how we handle them that makes the difference. Anxiety is particularly good at stirring up our anger. We are prone to negative thought patterns, obsessive worry, and increased irritability. If you struggle with anxiety odds are you also find yourself struggling with angry emotions from time to time. But there are ways to help yourself through these moments… 1. Acknowledge …

Social Media Sometimes Makes Me Feel Miserable, So I Took a Break

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Back in June I started to notice something every time I logged onto Twitter: it made me feel terrible. I would scroll, I would watch, and I would feel so so lost. But I am a blogger. I am a writer. I am expected to “build my brand” as an online presence. I need a “platform.” I need to be conscious of my accessibility, my persona, and my level of likability. I’m supposed to gain copious followers. I’m supposed to prove my popularity by my retweets, my likes, my finger on the pulse of the youth. There is so much potential with social media. And I’m the first to acknowledge that it’s done wonders for our ability to share, engage, and help move important causes forward (as well as the all-important abundance of cat videos). This year has felt rough though, as far as what is going on in the world. While every year, in the history of years, has it’s collections of tragedies, injustices, disasters, and sadness, I’ve felt the weight of 2016 a little …

My Anxiety Was a Third Wheel on My Honeymoon

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“I know I should be Zen and look at my nerves as a symbol of sensitivity and I should be grateful that we’re even here in the first place, but sometimes I get so MAD at myself.” I sat in the airport terminal, Jared waiting patiently next to me, as the loudspeaker overhead announced they were boarding rows 1 – 20. It was almost midnight and we were about to get on our plane to fly back home. We’d just spent a week in Hawaii on our honeymoon and my insides were churning like the ocean in the middle of a squall. My anxiety was pitching and rolling. The last thing I wanted to do was walk onto that airplane. And I was furious. No matter how much I’m aware of my patterns, my habits, and the way my nerves affect my physical body, it can still betray me despite my cognitive awareness. Like, I “know” there is nothing to be anxious about and yet my digestive track and stomach and muscles refuse to acknowledge this. …

A Story From a Reader

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This is a follow-up message, sent from the same reader who wrote the “Ask What You Want Wednesday” question on December 23rd. This content has been posted with permission from the writer. Sadly, there wasn’t a happy ending to my story as I hoped there would be, but I hope that the end of this will provide some comfort and hope to your readers. I spent Christmas doing the things I wanted to do, and I kept in touch with this man by texting each other once a day. I felt chilled out and positive, which made a nice change. After a lovely exchange on Boxing Day, I stopped hearing from him completely, but I managed to relax about it and just assumed he was busy. After a few days, I asked him if he was okay. He responded by saying he was fine and just had some family trouble. I took his word for it, but when I went back to the city to spend New Years with my friends, I’d still heard nothing. After a …

How to Keep Going in Those Moments of Doubt

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I still remember pacing back and forth in the parking lot, seagulls shrieking overhead and fishermen walking past at the end of their day. I’d driven out to the ocean, to my favorite pier, because I wanted to make sure I was in a space that felt comforting to me. I had to do something difficult that day. I had to call a boy I liked. I was in college at the time, nearing my twenty-first birthday, had still never kissed someone, and I’d recently been trying to Facebook flirt with a handsome fiction writer in my Southern Lit class. That afternoon he’d left me a voicemail seeing if I wanted to hang out. And that meant I had to call him back. It made me sick to my stomach. I’d been on edge of panic all day. My body was flooded with anxiety and adrenaline and I was weighed down with a heavy cloak of fear. I stood near the water as I dialed his number and with a shaky voice told him I …