Areas › Low mood and hard feelings
Low mood and hard feelings
Feelings are information before they are problems. The practices here are about naming what you feel accurately, sitting with what will not move yet, and acting on what matters to you even on the days nothing feels like anything.
Narrowed down
3 practicesHow long you have · Twenty minutes
Approach · Trauma informed
When · Under stress
Telling someone it was not their fault often bounces straight off, and there is a reason for that. Self blame can be the safer of the two stories, and you are asking them to give up shelter.
So do not lead with the correction. Say instead that it makes complete sense they landed there, that a child needs their parents to be good more than…
Shame works like a lid. While it is on, the anger and the sadness underneath stay out of reach, which is why going straight for them so rarely works.
If you keep trying to cry and nothing comes, or you know you should be furious and feel only flat and small, look at what is sitting on top. Naming…
Under most shame something else is waiting: anger at what was done, or grief for what was missed. That is the material worth reaching for.
You will know you are getting close when the flatness starts to move, often as heat in the chest or a lump in the throat. Anger in particular tends…