All posts tagged: Mental Health

Breaking Habits We Don’t Even Know We Have

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In my suggested readings section of this site I mention the book “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg. I read this book for the first time in the fall of 2014 and I am still a believer. The gist of this book is: change one habit, change your life. But what if we aren’t even aware of some of our habits? Shit, man, what then? After I first read “The Power of Habit” I literally only changed one habit from my days and by God it worked! For years I had a small novel bouncing around in my head, but hadn’t gotten around to writing it. So the one habit I changed was how I spent my lunch break at work. Instead of dicking around on the internet or wandering around the office kitchen I would grab my laptop the minute I clocked out, go to the next door coffee shop, and write for an hour. Every.single.day. And I eventually wrote the little book. I think of this anytime I feel helpless in life. It’s not always …

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 …

Why You Should Meet that Online Crush in Person Sooner Rather than Later

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I was supposed to be working on my writing exercise. After telling myself I was going to attend a local writers Meetup for over a year I finally dragged myself out into the world and did it. I was at a neighborhood coffee shop, surrounded by eight other women writers from Seattle, and we were doing a 10 minute character exercise. Except I couldn’t concentrate. I couldn’t concentrate because there was a first date at the table next to me. And they’d clearly met online. And it was clearly uncomfortable for both of them. To be perfectly honest, I could sit and listen to first dates all day long if I could. I love those first moments of sheer terror, of hope, of uncertainty, of wonder and fear. One of my first serious, head-over-heels crushes was with a man I met online. Or, we were introduced online by a mutual friend and started exchanging emails. And lemme tell you, hot shit was he dreamy and witty and perfect.  And for the first time in my life …

You’re Not Alone if You Feel Nervous About Dating

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Something really cool has happened over the past few years. I started this blog in 2013. It began as a place where I could think through pain points I’d had while trying to date as I also dealt with anxiety. One of my mantras when I thought about starting this blog was, “I can’t be the only one.” As you guys have shown me, I’m not. And I have the evidence to prove it. This site is powered via WordPress. There are thousands of people who find my blog via search engines online (Google, Bing, Yahoo, etc). For 95% of these searches I’m unable to see the words people typed in that led them to this site. But for the other 5% I can see what someone searched for. There are no other identifying factors for the search terms, so there’s no way to know the person’s age, gender, hometown, etc. Yet this anonymity makes me feel all the more connected.  And it’s one of the coolest things. In 2016 so far here’s a sampling …

Collecting Those Relationship Blueprints

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It would be so nice if in third grade we all sat down, opened our Relationship Textbooks, and started learning a set of skills. But, unfortunately, that shit doesn’t happen. In childhood we aren’t all taught the skills necessary to build solid, strong relationships. For the majority of us we learn how to “relationship” by what we see and observe in the relationships around us. I know, personally, that my anxiety often rattles around in my brain with negative thoughts. My skull is a gumball machine, my negative thoughts are hideously moldy gumballs, and they love to try and accumulate. Over the years I have spent way too much time thinking about all the things I “should” be doing better or that I “could” have done differently. I have spent a lot of time fixating on what “might” go wrong in the near future/distant future/hypothetical futures. And when it comes to my intimate relationships and the years I spent trying to enter into the dating world I spent a hell of a lot of time hating myself and my …