Author of You Are Not Your Mother: Releasing Generational Trauma & Shame and Difficult Mothers, Adult Daughters: A Guide for Separation, Liberation & Inspiration
what has been learned can be unlearned
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[Pre-S: values workshop details below] Being human and all, we have this tendency to make meaning of Every. Single. Thing. What other people do. What other people say. What we say to ourselves. [about ourselves] The sensations we feel in our bodies. This is normal and it's what helps us survive. We feel hunger, we eat. We feel tired, we sleep. We sense danger, we protect. Our bodies and brains are so highly evolved. And we've been conditioned to NOT pay attention to... or honor... or trust... those sensations. We've been conditioned to... fear them... control them... manipulate them... ignore them... be ashamed of them... pretend they don't exist. What has been learned can be unlearned. Precisely because our bodies and brains are so highly evolved. In the Shame School Community, we pay attention, we love, trust, and honor the sensations. We unshame them. We make new meaning of them. And? Best of all? We have a lot of fun on the way. Much, much love, Karen P.S. Workshop Alert! Have you ever felt betrayed by your values? Or like your values are aspirational but not really grounded in who you are? Or like your values collide, keeping you stuck in an unsatisfying limbo? Values are the foundation of being able to set (and maintain!) healthy boundaries while mitigating guilt, and most of us are walking around not even knowing that we get to both choose and define what we value. On Saturday June 6 (from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Eastern) I am facilitating a deep-dive workshop on values using the Wizard of Oz as a framework (based on Randi Buckley's groundbreaking work). You'll come away from this workshop with an understanding of
Click here to register. Price is $149. |
Karen C.L. Anderson
Author of You Are Not Your Mother: Releasing Generational Trauma & Shame and Difficult Mothers, Adult Daughters: A Guide for Separation, Liberation & Inspiration
[this is a long one] Last week I was driving home from the grocery store when a thought popped into my head about how my husband was going to react to something I had purchased. I noticed a pleasant flutter in my heart, expansion in my chest, the desire to take a deep breath and sigh (which I did), and warmth. I smiled. A whole-lit-up-face grin. I even looked at myself in the rearview window and reveled in it. Later the same day, I was reading Maria Semple's new book Go Gentle when this...
You can set the same boundary – distance, disconnection, even no contact – from a variety of different energies. It could be a protective survival strategy: fast, intense, and emotionally charged. It may feel like the only available option. It could also come from the grounded, clear, compassionate core of who you are beneath any armor (said with no disrespect to armor or "defensiveness"). Both responses are protective. Both are trying to take care of you. One protects you from pain by...
You were born knowing what you like and what you don't like, what's okay and what's not okay. You were born with the ability to express those preferences in myriad ways. In other words, you've always had boundaries. You've always known how to have boundaries. Boundaries are innate. I've heard boundaries described as being like an immune system: it's the part of you that knows how to respond to and repel abusive or toxic behavior. But at one time in your life, stuff happened and that innate...