Happy And Healthy Lifestyle

“What we see is only a fractional part of what really is.” ~Unknown On the surface, in the public eye, it can seem trivial. It might look like the seemingly harmless teasing of a child or romantic partner, joking about words they have mispronounced or silly mistakes they have made. Inane mistakes like putting on a shirt backward, burning something in the oven, or losing their keys. Mistakes that everyone makes. Abuse might sound like judgmental comments that appear to come from a place of compassion . Comments like: My daughter doesn’t apply herself; she’s lazy, and I wish she would care about her education so she can make something of herself. At the moment she likes girls, but I’m sure she’ll grow out of it because I just want her to be happy and get married and have a family. I wish he would make plans and stick to them instead of changing careers every five minutes; he would be so much happier. Sometimes on the surface abuse can sound like frustration: I wish she would jus...

“Feeling safe in someone’s energy is a different kind of intimacy. That feeling of peace and protection is really underrated.” ~Vanessa Klas I’m now fourteen months into my recovery from complex post-traumatic stress syndrome (c-PTSD aka complex trauma). I’d been in therapy for a number of years before I was diagnosed. I’d been struggling with interpersonal relationships and suffered from severe anxiety and depression , although you wouldn’t have guessed it from looking at me. There are so many misconceptions about trauma, and before my diagnosis in 2020 I wasn’t very trauma aware. I was your typical millennial thirty-something woman, juggling a successful corporate career with a jet-setting lifestyle. My Instagram feed was filled with carefully curated photos of me adventuring through Europe, eating flashy dinners at Edinburgh Castle or entertaining friends with cocktails in my flat just off the Water of Leith. Then 2020 hit. The world was thrust into a global pandemic that saw m...

DISCLAIMER: Though vaccines have allowed many of us to return to more normal activities, the pandemic isn’t over, and it’s still crucial that we all follow the evolving CDC guidelines to keep both ourselves and others safe. “Perfect happiness is a beautiful sunset, the giggle of a grandchild, the first snowfall. It’s the little things that make happy moments, not the grand events. Joy comes in sips, not gulps.” ~Sharon Draper It was a rainy, late Sunday afternoon. The sun was already going down, and it was getting dark outside. “How are you?” “Oh, good. Nothing special. It’s quiet,” my mom responded when I called her a couple of months ago. “It’s quiet” had been her response for the past two years, possibly before that. My mom is retired. Since the pandemic, her life became even more “quiet” than before—fewer friends, fewer activities, less fun. I’m not retired, but I work from home, and the same happened to me. To some degree, I let it happen . I got used to not seeing people...

“‘What should I do?’ I asked myself. ‘Spend another two miserable years like this? Or should I truly welcome my panic?’ I decided to really let go of wanting to block, get rid of, or fight it. I would finally learn how to live with it, and to use it as support for my meditation and awareness. I welcomed it for real. What began to happen was that the panic was suspended in awareness. On the surface level was panic, but beneath it was awareness, holding it. This is because the vital first step to breaking the cycle of the anxious mind is to connect to awareness.” ~Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche I have suffered with anxiety and depression for at least fifteen years. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t. They both almost killed me, but I have learned that living with them, rather than fighting them, is far more fortuitous in bringing relief. Fortunately, at no stage did I act on suicidal thoughts, but I would be a liar if I said I never had them. Not in terms of making plans, but the general...

“Smile, breathe, and go slowly.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh As a Lyft driver, I once spent significant time out on the road—a setting rife with provocations and stressors. Driving can feel like a constant challenge to employ mindfulness instead of giving way to destructive emotions like impatience and frustration. Meditation can be difficult to practice when you’re navigating a vehicle (demanding as both activities are of your full attention)—try channeling all your senses into it, and you’ll likely plow over a pedestrian or end with your car in a ditch. Navigating the road mindfully, though, doesn’t have to mean closing your eyes or adopting any of the other classic “meditative” stances. I think it involves something simpler: momentary detachment—both from everything that’s happening around you and from your own internal reactions as you watch from an ever so slight distance while they ebb and flow. Here’s some of what I’ve learned about maintaining equanimity when out there on the stress...

“Don’t waste your time and energy trying to convince people to value you. If you have to fight for their attention and respect, it’s time to move on.” ~Lori Deschane “Well, maybe if you didn’t make stupid decisions you wouldn’t have anxiety . Maybe you just need to think a bit more and be smarter. It’s so obvious to everyone that you have no idea what you’re doing. They know that without me you wouldn’t survive.” These words, along with many others like them, echoed through my head every day. Back in 2020, when the pandemic loomed over the earth and sent everyone into panic and despair, we were all unsure of what would happen. I, back in Canada, worked my nine-to-five government job and lived with a boyfriend, whom I’d been with for six years at that point. I wasn’t sure if it was the tension from the pandemic or the fear that everything was coming to an end that sent our relationship straight into the gutter. The pandemic forced me to sit alone with myself (and therapist—but that...

“Today I want you to think about all that you are instead of all that you are not.” ~Unknown “Love the pinecones!” This was a comment from a friend on one of my Facebook photos from a beautiful seaside hike filled with wildflowers and other natural wonders. When I responded with “It was a puzzle figuring out how to best photograph them” (not what I originally planned to write), she wrote, “Gregg, that’s such a fun part, isn’t it?” That comment was the brightening of a bulb that had already been going off in my head. It led to deeper self-reflection and awareness around my own self-talk patterns. We’ve all heard that how we speak to ourselves has a huge impact on our life. If your self-talk is largely negative , it lowers your self-confidence, drive, creativity, spirit, and enthusiasm for life. In short, it limits your self-expression and access to joy. If your self-talk is compassionate, understanding, and loving, it helps you to move through your life with much greater flow and e...