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Articles from Sheryl Paul | Selfgrowth.com
- Birth Trauma and Anxiety - by Submitted on Jan 31, 2018 from Sheryl PaulWhen working with anxiety and intrusive thoughts, the essential component is to resist the gravitational and habitual pull to attach onto the stories that appear like planets in our inner galaxy and assume that they’re true. The story of the day – whether it centers around your relationship, ...
Views: 1420 - Breathe It In - by Submitted on Sep 06, 2018 from Sheryl PaulThese are words I find myself saying multiple times a day: to my clients, to my sons, to myself. Breathe it in. We see a prairie dog hit by a car lying on the side of the road. I turn to look at my son’s face to see if he sees it. As we live in a rural area, he’s learned over the years of ...
Views: 785 - Call the Witch by Its True Name - by Submitted on Mar 09, 2018 from Sheryl PaulMy favorite fairy tale when I was a child was Rumpelstiltskin, the story of a girl who makes a bargain with an imp-like creature in exchange for saving her life from being executed by the king. First she gives the imp a necklace, then a ring, then promises her firstborn child. But when her child ...
Views: 1298 - Career Anxiety And How To Trust Your Path - by Submitted on Nov 12, 2019 from Sheryl PaulI receive a lot of questions from course members and clients on the topic of career anxiety: “How do I know if I’m at the right job? How do I know if it’s time to change paths? Have I missed my calling?” (If you’re struggling the myth of a calling, please read this post.) These questions ...
Views: 933 - Caring What Other People Think - by Submitted on Oct 04, 2018 from Sheryl PaulHow would your life be different if you didn’t care what other people thought? How might your relationship, your job, and your day-to-day functioning be different if you weren’t weighed down by others’ opinions? How might you peel and crack out of the shells of your insecurity and arrive more ...
Views: 963 - Caught in a Thought - by Submitted on Sep 06, 2018 from Sheryl PaulA coaching client recently shared the following (shared here with her permission): A few weeks ago, I found myself obsessively thinking about a situation with a friend of mine – someone to whom I’ve given my power for many years. I was completely caught by this theme and I couldn’t get out ...
Views: 941 - Caught in the Story - by Submitted on Feb 07, 2018 from Sheryl PaulOur stories form a crystal cave of stalactites and stalagmites in our minds, a cool chamber that seduces us with the promise that if we spend enough time there we will divine our answers. How beautiful this cave looks! How many promises it offers! And how familiar this cave becomes when we’ve ...
Views: 962 - Compassion or Comparison - by Submitted on Jun 02, 2016 from Sheryl PaulMy yoga teacher has said this phrase dozens of times, but one morning it went in differently and landed in the places where breath meets bone, where sinew aches with loss and the water in the pelvic bowl of my hips shimmered like a moonlit lake. The words traveled along ancient blood-lines to ...
Views: 1020 - Conversations with my Seven Year Old: In the Fear Forest - by Submitted on Jul 27, 2018 from Sheryl PaulOne of the blessings of having a second child is that we, as parents, gain some skills by walking with the first one through predictable stages of growth, maturity, illness, and emotional challenges. When our firstborn had a high fever, we panicked. When the younger one has a fever, it’s old ...
Views: 714 - Conversations with my Seven Year Old: In the Fear Forest - by Submitted on Jul 27, 2018 from Sheryl PaulOne of the blessings of having a second child is that we, as parents, gain some skills by walking with the first one through predictable stages of growth, maturity, illness, and emotional challenges. When our firstborn had a high fever, we panicked. When the younger one has a fever, it’s old ...
Views: 808 - Deconstructing the Family Story - by Submitted on Feb 07, 2018 from Sheryl PaulOne of the essential spokes of the growth and healing wheel is being willing to see our parents clearly. As children, we almost have no choice but to see our parents as infallible heroes and gods, and many people continue to carry these fantasies into adulthood. But if we’re to know ourselves, ...
Views: 1161 - Dismantling this Offshoot of Anxiety Will Set You Free - by Submitted on Sep 18, 2019 from Sheryl Paul“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom,” said Kierkegaard as quoted by Mark Nepo, who continues with, “The truth is that every fresh experience has this dizziness of freedom that we have to move through. Every time we reach beyond what is familiar, there is this necessary acclimation to what is ...
Views: 991 - Falling in Love with Other People - by Submitted on Oct 04, 2018 from Sheryl PaulLet’s blow the cover off of another taboo topic in our culture, one that causes my clients to barely be able to whisper their experience loud enough to share it with me: “falling in love” with people other than your partner, including bosses, celebrities, religious figures, and even your ...
Views: 675 - Fear Distorts Perception - by Submitted on Dec 08, 2014 from Sheryl Paul“Our eyes are not viewers; they are also projectors that are running a second story over the picture that we see in front of us all the time. Fear is writing that script. Now fear is going to be a player in your life. You get to decide how much. You can spend your whole life imagining ghosts, ...
Views: 2362 - Fear is a Friend in Disguise - by Submitted on Jan 30, 2018 from Sheryl PaulThere’s a common concept in our culture – one that I’ve adopted myself at times – that fear is our enemy. When we’re caught in fear’s offspring of anxiety and panic, it certainly feels like we’re been taken into enemy territory and are being held hostage. It feels like someone wraps a gloved ...
Views: 869 - Feelings Are Messy - by Submitted on Feb 01, 2018 from Sheryl PaulAs humans in an uncertain world, we seek certainty in a variety of ways. We ask questions that are fundamentally unanswerable. We ruminate and obsess on a single thought (otherwise known as intrusive thoughts). We Google and text and seek reassurance in a variety of increasingly technologically ...
Views: 1151 - Flags Versus Red Flags - by Submitted on Oct 17, 2018 from Sheryl PaulOne of the most common questions I’m asked during a coaching session is, “What are red flags? You say that if I’m suffering from relationship anxiety and I’m in a healthy and secure relationship without red flags then the anxiety is a manifestation of pain that needs attention as opposed to ...
Views: 840 - Gratitude 108 Offering - by Submitted on Dec 02, 2014 from Sheryl PaulWe hear a lot about the power of gratitude lately. There seems to have been a hundredth monkey leap in consciousness, a global awareness that gratitude is a powerful and relatively easy way to sweep out the propensity toward negativity and connect to what’s good and right in our world. For ...
Views: 1866 - Grief Neutralizes Thought - by Submitted on Jun 22, 2016 from Sheryl PaulWe are addicted to our stories. The thoughts come in and take us away on their magic carpet promise of arriving in a land of certainty, where the vulnerability and pain of life can't touch us. We learn early to climb aboard this carpet because, as young people, we usually don't know how to ...
Views: 1565 - Grief Neutralizes Thought - by Submitted on Jan 14, 2018 from Sheryl PaulWe are addicted to our stories. The thoughts come in and take us away on their magic carpet promise of arriving in a land of certainty, where the vulnerability and pain of life can’t touch us. We learn early to climb aboard this carpet because, as young people, we usually don’t know how to ...
Views: 1057 - Guilt and Regret - by Submitted on Feb 01, 2018 from Sheryl PaulLet’s imagine that there are invisible tracks streaming like ribbons in the ether of psyche. Some of these tracks resonate at a higher vibration and some move at a lower vibration. The tracks of higher vibration carry the feelings that emanate from the source of ourselves: sadness, joy, ...
Views: 1199 - Gut Health, Anxiety, and the Holidays Made Simple - by Submitted on Nov 26, 2019 from Sheryl PaulI’m delighted to share this guest post by Dianne Rishikof, a registered dietician and licensed nutritionist, where she shares her extensive knowledge on the connection between anxiety and gut health. I first read Dianne’s incredible book, “Health Takes Guts: Your Comprehensive Guide to ...
Views: 858 - Hang On - by Submitted on May 13, 2016 from Sheryl PaulAt the end of one of the interviews in the E-Course, when I asked the interviewee what she would like to say to those who are still in the trenches of relationship anxiety, she responded quite simply with, "Hang on. Hang on. Hang on." Those words have offered a lifeline to countless people who ...
Views: 1751 - Heartbroken Not Broken - by Submitted on Oct 31, 2018 from Sheryl PaulShame is often a placeholder for powerlessness and a protector against grief. Instead of feeling the rawness of grief, the mind latches onto a shame story that says, “I’m broken.” Instead of surrendering to the powerlessness of painful situations that had nothing to do with you, like your ...
Views: 836 - Holy Fear - by Submitted on Sep 19, 2018 from Sheryl PaulWe hear and read a lot of fear these days in psychological and spiritual circles. Mostly, fear is painted in a negative way as the energy that we have to wrestle with and overcome in order to live a life of joy. Most of the statements and quotes we read about fear pin it in the position of the ...
Views: 932 - How Marie Kondo can Help You Fall in Love With Your Partner - by Submitted on Feb 07, 2019 from Sheryl PaulAnxious people aren’t typically the most easy-going people on the planet. Because our high sensitivity wires us for hypervigilance, which then causes us to scan the horizon for danger, we’re physiologically primed to have a more tightly-wound nervous system. Unless you received guidance as a ...
Views: 987 - How One Lightbulb Moment Can Ease Your Anxiety - by Submitted on Feb 07, 2019 from Sheryl PaulIn every session with clients, I drop down into the core of myself, breathing and opening into the vessel of being so that I can listen with the ears we do not see, the ones that hear underneath the top layers stories into the invisible layers where the gem that needs to be revealed rises gently ...
Views: 839 - How to Break Free from the Mental Addiction of Health Anxiety - by Submitted on Jul 21, 2019 from Sheryl PaulLike all forms of anxiety, health anxiety is on the rise. With information about our health more available than ever, the anxious mind that seeks control at all costs can easily latch onto health as a hotbed theme that invites this mind to shift into overdrive. You mean I can prevent ...
Views: 760 - How to Excavate the Hidden Wounds to Help you Heal Shame - by Submitted on Dec 10, 2019 from Sheryl Paul“Whatever we have taken from them, the founding story of our lives, imposed on us by a mother and father who in turn inherited a faulty script from their own parents, isn’t even ours.” – Derren Brown in Happy There is an element of your shame that is not yours. It was drip-fed down through ...
Views: 977 - How to Find a Therapist - by Submitted on Feb 07, 2018 from Sheryl PaulOn a daily basis, my assistant and I receive the following email: “Can you recommend a therapist in my area who is familiar with your work?” Sadly, I don’t have a database of like-minded therapists, and, even more sadly, I know that many therapists fall into the “doubt means don’t” mindset ...
Views: 1103 - How to Harness the Hidden Sexy Ingredient of Marriage - by Submitted on Jul 21, 2019 from Sheryl PaulOur culture worships the gods of youth and eternal happiness. If we could bottle and merchandize the elixir of youth, most people in the Western world would purchase it no matter the price. We extol the blemish-and-wrinkle-free face and lay ourselves prostrate at the feet of the toned body. A ...
Views: 841 - How to Multiply Your Love and Attraction - by Submitted on Jul 21, 2019 from Sheryl PaulWhat would it be like to throw yourself full-bodied and without restraint into love’s arms, to set the fear voices and inherited scripts that say, “Love isn’t safe” on the fence of your mind and walk through the tattered gates of your heart that are still trying to keep you safe? What would ...
Views: 844 - How to Shatter the Myths that Are Keeping You Stuck - by Submitted on Dec 13, 2018 from Sheryl PaulA great deal of my work centers around shattering myths about love, romance, and intimacy that cause untold amounts of anxiety in relationships and sexuality. If we start with the very basic “doubt means don’t” slogan that permeates the culture of romantic love, we see immediately what happens ...
Views: 1324 - How We Love Ourselves - by Submitted on Jan 14, 2018 from Sheryl PaulWe hear a lot about the importance of loving ourselves these days, and how we can’t love someone else until we truly love ourselves. While I don’t entirely agree with that statement (adult attachment theory shows that it’s through secure attachment to loving others that we feel loved and, ...
Views: 1165 - I Feel Like I'm Lying When I Say I Love You - by Submitted on Jan 26, 2015 from Sheryl PaulThese are statements I hear quite often in my practice: I feel like I’m lying when I say I love you to my partner. I feel like a fake, an imposter, like I’m leading him/her on. If I don’t feel love, how can I say it? And I’m not always feeling it. In fact, it seems like more often than not I’m ...
Views: 1618 - I Hid in the Bookstore to Learn About Sex - by Submitted on Jan 05, 2020 from Sheryl PaulIn response to an email called “Emerging Womanhood” from my Sacred Sexuality course, a member shared the following on the forum. What touches me so deeply about her response is not only the exquisite vulnerability with which she tells her stories of becoming a young woman, but also the ways in ...
Views: 936 - I Love You Go Away - by Submitted on Oct 04, 2018 from Sheryl PaulAmong the many misconceptions that people have about love – that it’s only a feeling, that the feeling of being “in love” should exist from day one, that attraction is static and based on external attributes – the faulty belief that often gets swept under the rug more than any other is that ...
Views: 2942 - In Bed With Fear - by Submitted on Feb 07, 2018 from Sheryl PaulWe hear a lot about the power of fear these days, and the way we culturally/psychologically talk about it speaks to our beliefs that there are forces “out there” that are dark or evil that we need to overpower. In the early days of my work, I also spoke of fear in these terms, but over the years ...
Views: 1162 - Intrusive Thought: "What if I Harm a Child?" (POCD) - by Submitted on Sep 06, 2018 from Sheryl PaulWhen the same thought, image, dream, or motif shows up across cultures and crosses all of our lines of classification (age, gender, geography, race, religion), we call it an archetype. For example, the dreams where you show up at school without your pants on or have forgotten to study for a test ...
Views: 1043 - Intrusive Thought: “I Have to be Single In Order to Heal” - by Submitted on May 17, 2019 from Sheryl PaulIt’s a thought that arises frequently for those struggling with relationship anxiety: “I have to be single in order to heal.” Offshoots and extrapolations of this thought sound like: • “I have to backpack by myself across Europe.” • “I have to live in a loft in New York.” • “I haven’t ...
Views: 982 - Invisible Lines of Hope - by Submitted on Oct 04, 2018 from Sheryl PaulOut beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about. Rumi When we’re being asked to unpack a new layer of wound that will lead to healing, it can feel daunting, overwhelming, and ...
Views: 811 - It's Hard Being Human - by Submitted on Aug 11, 2018 from Sheryl PaulAt least once a day the phrase “it’s hard being human” enters my brain. It usually arrives on the heels of my sons arguing with each other and me trying to teach them how to communicate more effectively. As a result of feeling hurt, one will lash out at the other, and before we know it the great ...
Views: 890 - It's Not What You Think - by Submitted on Nov 24, 2014 from Sheryl PaulOne the many problems of living in an image-based, superficial culture is that we learn to take life at face value. You have a dream about having sex with someone other than your partner and you latch onto the most obvious interpretation that you secretly want to have sex with someone else. You ...
Views: 1804 - Leaf in the Wind Syndrome - by Submitted on Aug 11, 2018 from Sheryl Paul“I’m always comparing my relationship to other people’s relationships. Why does everyone else look like they’re so in love?” “I have such a hard time making decisions. Sometimes I can’t even decide what to order at a restaurant!” “I worry about whether or not my family likes my partner. I ...
Views: 887 - Loneliness and Love - by Submitted on Oct 17, 2018 from Sheryl PaulThere’s a fundamental loneliness that is part of the fabric of being human. It arrives in the corners of night, when shadows form from curtain folds and the backs of chairs. It seeps in just before twilight, when afternoon exhales its last breath and evening hasn’t yet inhaled. It lives on the ...
Views: 942 - Loneliness is a Part of Life - by Submitted on Aug 11, 2018 from Sheryl PaulOne of the biggest obstacles to finding more wellness and equanimity is the belief that we shouldn’t be feeling what we’re feeling; that if we were more evolved or healed or with a different partner we wouldn’t feel so ________ (anxious, depressed, lonely, confused, empty, bored). Because we ...
Views: 799 - Longing for Desire - by Submitted on May 13, 2016 from Sheryl PaulMost people are familiar with the heart-aching pain of grief. Most people can identify the empty thud of loneliness. Most people know when they've been pricked by the green-eyed monster of jealousy, or taken under the thick, gray blanket of shame. But how often do we talk about longing? In ...
Views: 1774 - Loss of Light - by Submitted on Nov 12, 2014 from Sheryl PaulLight fading, time passing, big boy is ten, baby isn’t a baby and the time for having babies is over. The pregnant woman in the check-out line and it’s eleven years ago, pregnant with my own belly of hope and love, on the threshold of everything new and exciting. There was pain then, too, but ...
Views: 1465 - Love Cannot Be Measured - by Submitted on Jan 19, 2015 from Sheryl PaulLove cannot be measured. It cannot be placed in test tubes in a science laboratory or placed on the great scale of life to determine whether or not there’s enough. The anxious/sensitive mind longs for a definite answer to the questions that swirl through its brain - Do I love you enough? What is ...
Views: 2280 - Love is a Practice - by Submitted on Dec 15, 2014 from Sheryl PaulWe have an idea in this culture that you either have it or you don’t: You’re athletic or you’re clumsy; you’re a great orator or you stumble over words; you’re talented artistically or you can barely draw a stick figure; love comes easily to you or you struggle to find flow in relationships. ...
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