KEALA KEA NEWSLETTER
What is Therapy?
Therapy is a change enterprise. When you enter therapy, you are signing up for change. Unlike the...
Flight From Feeling: Rumination
Something turns it on—a dysregulating encounter, a rupture with a loved one, a bad dream—anything that activates the emotions that we were forbidden to feel as children.
Crossing the Bridge
This is an article about panic; the type of panic that is attached to particular places or...
Meet the Critics
When life gets you down, who shows up for you emotionally? Can you give yourself kindness when you...
Intentional Attention
"Where attention goes, energy flows" These days the competition for our attention is fierce....
What is Codependency?
"How empty of me to be so full of you" --John Lennon Codependency is a maladaptive relational...
Disappointment and Hope
“And the day cameWhen the risk to remainClosed tightly in a budBecame more painfulThan the risk it...
Forgiveness and Accountability
Genuine forgiveness does not deny anger but faces it head-on. --Alice Miller Forgiveness is a gift...
Resource Memories
... you never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory" --Dr. Seuss We’ve all...
In Case of Emotional Emergency
An emotional emergency is a sudden surge of intense emotional energy (adrenaline and cortisol)...
Boundaries*
Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves even when we risk...
Emotional Fitness
These days most of us feel challenged by the pressures stemming from the pandemic. The concept of...
Mood Modulators for Shifting Anxiety
When we experience feelings of anxiety, our autonomic nervous system is preparing to launch into...
Listening to Resistance
We may be feeling our resistance these days; resistance to traffic, to school, to busyness, to...
Taking Charge of Your Story
“When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this...
Relational Health
Humans develop through prolonged dependence upon their primary caregivers. The importance of those...
I Author My Own Disappointments
This is a liberation statement. If I create disappointments for myself, then I can stop, right? I...
The Shifting Sands of Reentry
Social expectations are ramping up as the restrictions begin to loosen. As we go back to work, go...
What Is Our Business
“There are only 3 kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours, and *God’s.” --Byron Katie...
A Change Enterprise Part II: The Unmet Need
Creating change in our lives rests upon the ability to internalize new information and apply it to...
A Change Enterprise
Healing from childhood emotional abandonment, neglect, and abuse is mostly an “inside job”. Loved...
The Stories We Tell
Humans make meaning. This meaning-making enterprise -- our human inheritance-- makes sense of the...
Emotional Accountability
Emotional Accountability is a critical skill to nurture when healing from the CUTS (Chronic...
Planting Flowers
“In the Garden of the Mind … Be with what is there; Decrease the Negative; Increase the Positive....
Perfectly Imperfect
Perfection is the solution of a young mind trying to grow itself up in an atmosphere of judgement,...
Receptivity vs Overwhelm
“By Surrendering, you create an energy field of receptivity for the solution to appear” ~ Wayne...
The Alchemy of Grief
I saw grief drinking a cup of sorrow and called out:“It tastes sweet. Doesn’t it?”“You have caught...
Letting Go
Letting go of that which no longer serves is a lifelong process: like our reptilian ancestors we...
The Witness
Most of us have an internal running dialog that is unkind and unhelpful. This internal dialog...
Having New Eyes
“The real voyage of discovery consists, not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”...
Blind Justice
“There are debates about, well, maybe people should say, ‘All lives matter.’ Of course, all lives...
After the Storm …
… our evolutionary ancestors would venture out and wonder: is it safe? We may feel it now, the...
Coasting Hands Free!
A girl on a bike, feet off the pedals, picking up speed as she flies down the hill, the asphalt...
The Power of No
It is one of the first words we learn to speak in our language—we say NO before “yes”. The impulse...
Honor Your Mother
Sunday is Mother’s Day. It is a day full of feeling—of remembering our mothers, our grandmothers,...
*Noticing the Good Enough
It’s been 6 weeks since The Great Disruption wrenched us away from our (now former) lives; It may...
The Great Disruption
Like an earthquake it is heaving our social and emotional rift zones, revealing fault lines...
Resilience
Resilience is the bend of a flexible being, one able to withstand storms from without....
Safety is in the Body, Not the Story!
In my last newsletter I talked about catastrophizing. Catastrophizing is launched when we are...
Catastrophizing and COVID-19
What is catastrophizing? It is a cognitive distortion—an invented story of impending doom. This...
Focal Points
Below are a few simple ways to reduce anxiety. When we focus on what we can control, we will feel...