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Articles from Sheryl Paul | Selfgrowth.com
- What is the Work of Breaking Free from Relationship Anxiety? - by Submitted on Oct 31, 2018 from Sheryl PaulA coaching client recently said to me, “You talk a lot about doing “the work”, and I wondered for so long what “the work” was. I thought that if I understood anxiety intellectually I would feel better. And the first time I went through the course I did feel better for a while, which I know is ...
Views: 974 - Would You Like To Know Why Real Love Is So Scary - by Submitted on Mar 02, 2019 from Sheryl Paul“We are all made up of yearning and light, searching for a way out, afraid we will be shut in or cut off or repelled back into the ground from which we are reaching. This is enough to begin: To know, before all the names and histories drape who we are, that we want to be held and left alone, ...
Views: 967 - Unpacking Intrusive Thoughts - by Submitted on Sep 19, 2018 from Sheryl PaulOver the years, I’ve worked with many clients who have suffered from the intrusive thought, “What if my partner is gay?” (or “What if my partner is straight?” for those in a same-sex relationship), and while I’ve written several posts on the “What if I’m gay?” spike I haven’t written about what ...
Views: 964 - Where Anxiety Hangs Its Hat - by Submitted on Sep 06, 2018 from Sheryl PaulAnxiety can hang its hat on almost any hook. It can focus on relationships, fertility, parenting, health, the world, money, career, death. Within each of these topics, there are endless sub-topics that lure anxiety into its lair. If we’re talking about relationship anxiety, for example, the hook ...
Views: 964 - 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 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 - Anxiety is a Game of Whack-A-Mole - by Submitted on Jan 30, 2018 from Sheryl PaulThe anxious mind can latch onto almost any topic: What if I don’t have enough money? What if my kids aren’t okay? What if I don’t get pregnant? What if I have cancer? What if I don’t love my partner enough and I’m making a terrible mistake? What if I don’t have enough friends? What if ...
Views: 956 - The Poetry of Loss - by Submitted on Nov 11, 2018 from Sheryl PaulMy son and I are driving into town for our weekly Friday morning special time and Suzanne Vega’s song “The World Before Columbus” comes on. It’s a song she wrote for her daughter that I used to sing to Everest when he was a baby, and these lyrics made me cry every time: Those men who lust for ...
Views: 951 - When Will I Feel Better? - by Submitted on Jul 27, 2018 from Sheryl PaulWhen you’re neck-deep and soul-soaked in anxiety, when you’re having trouble eating, sleeping, and basically functioning, when the love you formally felt for your partner has been eclipsed by indifference, doubt, or numbness, when intrusive thoughts invade your brain day and night, you will ...
Views: 949 - One of the Anxious Statements I Hear Every Week - by Submitted on Feb 07, 2019 from Sheryl PaulOne of the blessings of listening to the inner worlds of my global audience is that I hear about the thoughts, feelings, questions, and stories that are archetypal to all human beings. I’ve written extensively about the various intrusive thoughts that enter my virtual office, but there are other ...
Views: 943 - 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 - Explode the #1 Block to Healing from Anxiety (Relationship and Otherwise) - by Submitted on Dec 13, 2018 from Sheryl PaulA few weeks ago, as I was cleaning out our closet, I stumbled upon a stack of papers from my grandmother. Most of the papers were familiar, but one unfamiliar packet literally dropped onto my lap, a stapled report for an adult-education class in psychology that she took in 1963 that I had never ...
Views: 941 - 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 - What Should Love Feel Like? - by Submitted on Sep 06, 2018 from Sheryl PaulAt least once a week, a client asks, “I know that love isn’t all butterflies and fireworks, but what should it feel like? Since I’ve never seen a healthy relationship and I’ve never been in one, I have no idea what it should be like.” I usually balk at the word “should”, but I know what ...
Views: 941 - Does Relationship Anxiety Ever End - by Submitted on Oct 04, 2018 from Sheryl PaulAmong the many questions that dart through the mind plagued by relationship anxiety, the one that can cause either hope or despair is, “Will this anxiety ever end? The short answer is yes: the acute anxiety that you’re experiencing – the one that wakes you in the night and causes you to lose ...
Views: 937 - 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 - 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 - 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 - Moment By Moment - by Submitted on Jan 31, 2018 from Sheryl PaulLife is a series of micro-moments. Most of the time, we’re floating along in the fast-paced current without self-reflection. But inevitably, at some point, we will get snagged on a branch of anxiety or intrusive thoughts, an uncomfortable feeling, an illness, an argument with a loved one, or a ...
Views: 926 - You Have to Love - by Submitted on Mar 09, 2018 from Sheryl Paul“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it ...
Views: 926 - Anxiety Blocks Connection - by Submitted on Feb 01, 2018 from Sheryl PaulOn the heels of my post on connection, which was both comforting and spike-inducing for some of my readers and course members, I’m elaborating on the topic of connection, specifically this one line: Of course, when anxiety is at the helm, it’s difficult to feel attached or secure anywhere and ...
Views: 924 - What is my Truth? - by Submitted on Aug 11, 2018 from Sheryl PaulOn the last round of Open Your Heart a participant asked: “So if I don’t trust these anxious thoughts then what can I trust? If my truth was really that we are not right for each other then how would I know if I am teaching myself not to listen when doubts arise?” And then she wisely ...
Views: 920 - A Brave Explosion of the Myth of Desire - by Submitted on Jan 07, 2019 from Sheryl PaulAs always when I run my Sacred Sexuality course, I was blown away by the vulnerability and honesty on the forum on this last round. Where else do we share our deepest, darkest thoughts and feelings around sexuality, the ones we think we’re the only ones having, the ones that cause shame to ...
Views: 917 - The Day My Son Flew Into The Sky - by Submitted on Oct 31, 2018 from Sheryl PaulHe had been waiting for this since he was two years old. For as far back as we can remember, Everest has wanted to fly. Many young kids, especially boys, have a penchant for things that go – trucks, cars, trains, boats – but for Everest it was more than a stage; it was a calling. He wasn’t ...
Views: 917 - The Art of Patient Loving - by Submitted on Oct 31, 2018 from Sheryl PaulPerhaps the area of our lives to suffer most from the increasingly fast pace of the culture is love, for the expectation of immediate results naturally leads to a belief that love should not only be easy, but that when there’s a problem, it should be remediated quickly. Love doesn’t work this ...
Views: 916 - When Anxious, Start at the Beginning - by Submitted on Jul 27, 2018 from Sheryl PaulAnxiety is a messenger, a symptom, and a gift. I know that statement flies in the face of everything we learn about anxiety in a culture that is pathologically obsessed with eradicating shadow at every turn and consequently attempts to “get rid of” the symptom of anxiety as quickly and cleanly ...
Views: 916 - These Two Banished Emotions Need to be Invited to the Castle - by Submitted on Oct 15, 2019 from Sheryl PaulIn myths and fairy tales, the banished characters are shadow aspects who represent the inner characters we would like to sequester away in a cloistral tower or banish to the middle of the forest: the virginal maiden representing forbidden chastity, the unattractive witch representing the ...
Views: 914 - Perfection and The Fear of Failure - by Submitted on Sep 19, 2018 from Sheryl Paul“It’s better to make a mistake with the full force of your being than to carefully avoid mistakes with a trembling spirit.” – Dan Millman, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior When I was in graduate school many ago, my classmates would often ask me how I was able to write papers so quickly and ...
Views: 912 - The Cracks are How the Light Comes In - by Submitted on Oct 04, 2018 from Sheryl PaulWhen discussing the concept that a root cause of relationship anxiety is the fear of being hurt by love, course members and coaching clients will often say, “I had a good childhood with loving parents. Why would I be so scared of love?” I’ve written other posts about how essential it is to peel ...
Views: 907 - Something is Wrong - by Submitted on Sep 19, 2018 from Sheryl PaulFear-mind has a special genius for trying to prove that it’s right. It’s like we all have this aspect of our personality – some call it ego, other call it lower self – that has secretly attended law school and graduated at the top of its class. This character, terrified of change, will gather ...
Views: 907 - The Scariest Thing We Do - by Submitted on Oct 04, 2018 from Sheryl PaulEvery day that I work with clients struggling with relationship anxiety I find myself saying some version of, “Of course you’re scared. Loving is the scariest thing we do.” As I’ve written about several times on this blog, fear doesn’t always present as fear but instead shows up as irritation, ...
Views: 903 - The Art of Making Decisions - by Submitted on Oct 04, 2018 from Sheryl PaulOur culture fails to teach us the essential skills we need to navigate through life successfully in so many ways. As I discuss often on this site, it fails to teach us about healthy, real love. It fails to teach us about how to feel our feelings and work with our thoughts. It fails to guide us ...
Views: 903 - The Gift of Projection - by Submitted on Oct 17, 2018 from Sheryl PaulProjection is one of the most important concepts to understand when you’re stuck in relationship anxiety or any manifestation of anxiety. It’s a psychological term that essentially means we’re stuck in a story about someone or something else with the belief that it’s true, and that if the person ...
Views: 903 - A Roadmap for How to Reclaim Your Magnificent Body - by Submitted on Jan 07, 2019 from Sheryl PaulSacred Sexuality isn’t only about sexuality; it’s about our relationship to our bodies, our creativity and our aliveness. When we learn to rinse away shame layers so that we can inhabit and appreciate the bodies we’re in (instead of the one we’re conditioned to believe we’re supposed to be in ), ...
Views: 897 - The Two Most Important Qualities You Need in a Partner - by Submitted on Jan 24, 2019 from Sheryl PaulAs evidenced by our high divorce rate and, even more disheartening, how few long-term marriages are thriving and fulfilling, it’s clear that our culture has it all wrong when it comes to love. Not only do we project our gold and gods onto our partners instead of taking responsibility for our own ...
Views: 892 - Love is Softening - by Submitted on Mar 09, 2018 from Sheryl PaulOur hearts are encased in protection, layers of materials like iron or brick that create a fortress around our most sensitive selves. When these material first arrived, they came as friends, for our hearts as young people didn’t know how to rest undefended. We needed to harden in order to ...
Views: 891 - 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 - 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 - When Love Makes You Flinch - by Submitted on Jul 27, 2018 from Sheryl PaulOne of the common fear-lines that arises when the ego is trying to deconstruct the idea of relationship anxiety and convince you that your truth is that you’re just with the wrong person is: “If what Sheryl says is true, why don’t more people talk about it?” It’s an understandable question, ...
Views: 885 - World Anxiety - by Submitted on Sep 19, 2018 from Sheryl PaulOne of the byproducts of being a highly sensitive person prone to anxiety is that you tend to take on others’ pain and stories. This is particularly true if you had an enmeshed relationship with a parent growing up and didn’t learn to solidify the borders of your skin but instead became a porous ...
Views: 883 - A Roadmap to Break Free From Anxiety at Last - by Submitted on Sep 06, 2019 from Sheryl PaulWe spend at least fifteen years in school learning the skills that our culture has deemed essential for a certain type of success in the world. We learn how to read. We learn the basics of math. We learn how to write. If we’re lucky, there’s some art and theater thrown in, but it’s understood ...
Views: 880 - Am I Only With My Partner Because He Makes Me Feel Safe? - by Submitted on Jul 27, 2018 from Sheryl PaulThere are so many ways the ego tries to dismantle real love, and it’s favorite is to perseverate on a single question until it tires itself out, then jump to the next story. I’ve dissected many of these questions on this blog and in my courses, approaching each in the same way: name it as an ...
Views: 875 - Pregnancy Anxiety - by Submitted on Sep 19, 2018 from Sheryl PaulAs I’ve written about before on this blog, one of the privileges of being the position of guiding people through the darkest aspects of their psyche and soul is that they share thoughts and feelings with me that they wouldn’t share with anyone else. Part of the reason why they share openly about ...
Views: 874 - There's Something Broken But It's Not You - by Submitted on Jan 07, 2019 from Sheryl PaulI spend a lot of time thinking about our culture, and it’s a topic I bring up almost every week in my blog and courses in some form. Lately, I’ve been thinking about how terribly sad and actually tragic it is that culture should support its members into becoming more of who they are, but we, in ...
Views: 873 - To Be Human - by Submitted on Feb 07, 2018 from Sheryl PaulTo be human is to know that we are imperfect and whole: we will hurt and be hurt; we will feel disappointed and will disappoint; we will stumble and fall and get back up again. To be human is to remember that this being human is an experiment without a goal or destination but with a plan that ...
Views: 871 - What If I'm REALLY Not Attracted to my Partner? - by Submitted on Mar 09, 2018 from Sheryl PaulThe following question is one I often receive from my clients who are struggling with the specific spoke of relationship anxiety that contains the longing to feel more love, connection, and attraction for their partner (and let’s remember that I use attraction or lack of attraction in the ...
Views: 870 - 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 - This is How to Overcome the Most Powerful Obstacle to Change - by Submitted on Sep 06, 2019 from Sheryl PaulWe all know that greens are healthy. We know that meditation can be life-changing. We know that breathwork is deeply healing and that yoga can be a pathway to profound change. We know that exercise is essential. We know that journaling is a powerful tool. We know it, but what stops us from ...
Views: 869 - This Simple Mindset Shift is at the Heart of Change - by Submitted on Oct 27, 2019 from Sheryl Paul“Much of our anxiety and inner turmoil comes from living in a global culture whose values drive us from the essence of what matters. At the heart of this is the conflict between the outer definition of success and the inner value of peace. “Unfortunately, we are encouraged, even trained, to ...
Views: 863 - 10,000 Hours of Love - by Submitted on Jan 30, 2018 from Sheryl PaulAlongside the adolescent view of love we hold in this culture that says that love is a feeling, we also believe that love should be easy. Of course, this attitude of effortlessness and ease extends far beyond the bounds of love; more and more, people seem to believe that life itself should be ...
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