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Articles from Sheryl Paul | Selfgrowth.com
- How Engagement Counseling Can Affair-Proof Your Marriage - by Submitted on Feb 27, 2010 from Sheryl PaulMy clients call me with a variety of anxiety-based questions (many of which I’ve discussed in previous articles): Does my anxiety mean that I don’t love my fiancé enough? How do I know that I’m making the right decision? Is there someone out there who’s better for me? Does the fact that I’m not ...
Views: 2719(1 vote) - How We Love Ourselves - by Submitted on Jun 08, 2016 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: 1010(1 vote) - Not attracted? Learn How to Unclog the Blocked Flow of Love - by Submitted on Aug 01, 2019 from Sheryl PaulOnce again, I turn to the poet and mystic Mark Nepo and The Book of Awakening for gems of wisdom about the stones that block our hearts from fully loving: “It seems this is the never-ending work of relationship, each of us in our own time and way moving the stones between us, repositioning ...
Views: 794(1 vote) - The Fear of Aging - by Submitted on Mar 18, 2011 from Sheryl PaulDuring my search for new recipes for my little vegetarian son (who declared he was a vegetarian about nine months ago; you can read about it on my blog), I stumbled upon a beautiful and inspiring book called, Healthy at 100, by John Robbins (author of Diet for a New America). As my current life ...
Views: 2105(2 votes) - The Grief Place - by Submitted on Dec 02, 2014 from Sheryl PaulThere is a room in your heart where sadness dwells. Each story of sadness lives there like a stagnant, frozen particle of light waiting for you to see it, to hold it, to wrap it in a blanket and bring it tea. When you visit your grief place with love, the particles of light start to shimmer and ...
Views: 1830(1 vote) - “I’m Not In Love” - by Submitted on Mar 18, 2011 from Sheryl PaulA few weeks ago had a great session with the man I’ve referred to as “Matthew” in these posts. We’ve been working together for quite some time and have uncovered layer upon layer of false beliefs that are contributing to his unhappiness. But in this particular session we uncovered what I believe ...
Views: 1886(2 votes) - Grieving as Letting Go - by Submitted on Mar 18, 2011 from Sheryl PaulAt the heart of transitioning consciously is the willingness to grieve. Sometimes grief arises unbidden as a pang of emptiness; sometimes it wells up in a bubble of memory about a former house; sometimes it appears as a longing for a past experience or stage of life; sometimes it comes barreling ...
Views: 1925(3 votes) - The Secret to a Peaceful Life - or The Fear of Death - by Submitted on Sep 30, 2012 from Sheryl PaulWe all long for a peaceful life. We search for peace through the mediums that our culture sells: through spending, watching television, searching the Internet, finding the “perfect” partner, having a baby, and a variety of other misguided methods. We even meditate, practice yoga, and attend ...
Views: 2190(1 vote) - Love is Stronger than Fear - by Submitted on Mar 18, 2011 from Sheryl PaulMy son is still struggling with his nighttime fears. He’s been engaged in this battle for a year and a half and, while he’s no longer in a state of terror, the fear creeps up steadily enough to prevent him from falling asleep easily. We’ve introduced him to every technique and tool we can think ...
Views: 1683(3 votes) - Transitions: The Art of Letting Go - by Submitted on Jan 16, 2010 from Sheryl PaulTransitions provide continual opportunities to practice the art of the letting go. At each new threshold, the task is to let go of the old lifestyle, identity, and belief systems that are no longer serving us so that we can gracefully move into the new stage. The adolescent lets go of childhood. ...
Views: 4838(24 votes) - Engagement Anxiety Dismantled: Real Love versus Infatuation - by Submitted on Dec 20, 2009 from Sheryl PaulTransitions are always opportunities for growth and healing. Sometimes we need to heal ways of being in the world that are no longer serving us – like my clients who realize, through the wedding planning, that they’re suffering from the disease to please and that they need to learn how to put ...
Views: 2678(5 votes) - Engagement Anxiety Dismantled: The Grass Is Always Greener Syndrome - by Submitted on Jan 16, 2010 from Sheryl PaulWhen my grandparents got married in the 1930s, I’m quite certain neither one of them had the kind of engagement anxiety I see among people today. My grandmother did experience grief about leaving her mother and two sisters and the difficult feelings were displaced onto her wedding dress and veil ...
Views: 4958(2 votes) - Engagement Anxiety Relieved: A Media Diet - by Submitted on Jan 03, 2010 from Sheryl PaulTransitions render us more vulnerable emotionally and psychologically than during other times in our lives. Being in a transition means that we are between stages and identities: no longer single but not quite married; no longer a non-mother but not quite a mother. These in-between zones are ...
Views: 4535(2 votes) - Engagement Anxiety Relieved: Working with Projection - by Submitted on Feb 27, 2010 from Sheryl PaulMost people in an intimate relationship will, at some point, find themselves stuck in a projection about their partner. Projections are a bit challenging to define and even more challenging to see it when you’re in it. In Wikipedia’s words: “Psychological projection or projection bias ...
Views: 5749(3 votes) - One Moment At A Time - by Submitted on Apr 01, 2011 from Sheryl PaulOne of the slogans in the 12-step programs is One Day At A Time. In the life of someone enduring a transition - whether in the midst of a break up, becoming a mother, trying to conceive, or retiring - a more appropriate and helpful phrase is One Moment At A Time. This topic recently emerged ...
Views: 1792(2 votes) - The Lies We Live With - by Submitted on Jun 04, 2010 from Sheryl PaulAround the sixth month of my pregnancy with my second son, my hip locked up to the point of debilitating pain. I had experienced something similar in my first pregnancy, but the second time was more extreme and I knew I needed help. I booked an appointment with a bodyworker and hobbled my way to ...
Views: 1585(5 votes) - The Timetable of Transitions - by Submitted on Mar 15, 2011 from Sheryl PaulTransitions, like grief, have their own timetable. Despite one's best efforts to rush along the difficult feelings and anxious thoughts, each person will traverse the terrain of transitions according to their own internal needs and rhythm. While major life transitions like getting married or ...
Views: 1570(1 vote) - The Conscious Groom: What Men Really Feel - by Submitted on Dec 27, 2009 from Sheryl PaulWhile I was researching and writing “The Conscious Bride” thirteen years ago, I simultaneously took notes and interviewed for the obvious sequel, “The Conscious Groom”. But when I presented the idea to my publisher they said that there simply wasn’t a male market for that kind of book. Perhaps ...
Views: 3354(5 votes) - Parenthood: Letting go again and again and again - by Submitted on Apr 27, 2010 from Sheryl PaulWhen I first began doing research for Conscious Motherhood - both the book (yet to be published) and the website - I was struck by the recurrent theme among new parents about how challenging it was to let go. The specific area of challenge differed from each person, ranging from letting go of ...
Views: 1531(3 votes) - Engagement Anxiety Relieved: Daily Journaling - by Submitted on Dec 20, 2009 from Sheryl PaulWhen my clients are struggling with engagement anxiety and marriage fear, they often ask what they can do between sessions to help alleviate their suffering. I offer a variety of specific exercises depending on the details of the client’s story, but there is one exercise I suggest to all my ...
Views: 5710(2 votes) - 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 - 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 - If I'm Calm Now Is It Still Relationship Anxiety? - by Submitted on Jul 27, 2018 from Sheryl PaulThere is often a predictable arc to relationship anxiety that includes three stages.* The first stage is characterized by typical symptoms of anxiety and panic: Can’t sleep Can’t eat Tearful Depressed Bolting awake in the middle of the night Difficulty functioning at work Fluttering ...
Views: 723 - Live the Questions - by Submitted on Sep 19, 2018 from Sheryl PaulI recently came across the following in a book called “The Middle Passage” by James Hollis: “What the frightened individual wishes above all is the restoration of the sense of self which once worked. What the therapist knows is that the symptoms are helpful clues to the place of injury or ...
Views: 812 - 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: 906 - 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 - Time to Get on With One's Loving - by Submitted on Sep 06, 2018 from Sheryl PaulIn response to one of the assignments in my Sacred Sexuality course to watch the film “Enchanted April”, a member of the forum shared the following. I was so moved by her response that I asked permission to share it here. She wrote: This film touched something deep inside me. After I watched ...
Views: 643 - What If I Make a Mistake? - by Submitted on Aug 11, 2018 from Sheryl PaulWhen my boys were learning how to write, they would freeze in their tracks for fear of making a spelling mistake. Their perfectionist tendencies were not a surprise to my husband and I – after all, the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree – and it was both fascinating and painful to see how ...
Views: 781 - "I Wish He Was Taller" - by Submitted on Jul 07, 2016 from Sheryl PaulI could have titled this post with any of the phrases I hear every day from my clients and course members: "I wish she was thinner." "I wish he was more successful." "I wish she had better skin." "I wish he was more assertive." "I wish she had a different voice." But this is the ...
Views: 1048 - 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 ...
Views: 861 - A 24-Hour Challenge - by Submitted on Sep 06, 2018 from Sheryl PaulIn 2008, shortly after we moved from Los Angeles to Denver with our two-year old son, I adopted a weekly ritual in honor of the Jewish sabbath: to shut down my computer for twenty-four hours. This was before the era of smartphones and before I was pouring my energy into my online business daily, ...
Views: 857 - 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 - A Lifeline of Hope in the Swamp of Relationship Anxiety - by Submitted on May 17, 2019 from Sheryl PaulA coaching client recently wrote to me to share the following (shared with permission): Each time of the three times I spoke to you, you told me something that has been a huge lifeline for me: “If two people are willing to make it work, they can make it work.” You mentioned this to me three ...
Views: 806 - A Love Story is the Medicine for the Fear of Loss - by Submitted on Jul 21, 2019 from Sheryl PaulIt was one of those moments that I could have easily pushed aside and continued on through my evening wrapped in the spiderweb of distraction. It was a moment so small that I almost missed the worlds of beauty and pain that lived within it, like a monarch butterfly floating past and I, caught in ...
Views: 753 - A Manual for Love - by Submitted on Jan 22, 2015 from Sheryl PaulI wish I had been given one. I wish we all had been handed a Love Manual in a class in high school, and taken levels two and three in college. For there are basic laws and practices we could have learned that would have made the path of intimate relationship so much easier had we only been given ...
Views: 1548 - A Passionate Life - by Submitted on Nov 17, 2014 from Sheryl PaulInspired by the courageous, wise members of my July 2014 Trust Yourself program. Quotes from the forum reprinted with permission. *** My family and I were driving into town last summer when we saw a blue van pass by with the words “Mr. Pool” printed on the side. “There goes Mr. Pool,” I ...
Views: 1760 - A Remedy When You Don’t Know Who You Are - by Submitted on Apr 11, 2019 from Sheryl PaulOur culture entrains us not to know who we are. From the time we’re born and continuing into our early years, we’re conditioned to externalize our sense of self through being told when and how to eat, sleep, play, socialize, learn. Although this may be changing, the dominant child-raising ...
Views: 1419 - 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 - 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 - A Tale of Two Moths, Dark Night of the Soul, and Sexuality - by Submitted on Jan 14, 2018 from Sheryl PaulI met Andrea in my first round of Open Your Heart in May 2013. Every time she posted on the forum, I was moved and inspired by the depth and clarity of her writing, and her ability to transpose her inner world into words. When she shared this story with me over email, I immediately asked if she ...
Views: 1246 - Am I Connected Enough to My Partner? - by Submitted on Feb 01, 2018 from Sheryl PaulThe connection question is one of the most common spikes that darts across the screen of my clients and readers’ consciousness when they’re struggling with relationship anxiety. Do we connect enough? Do we talk enough? What if I feel bored sometimes? Is there a meeting of the minds? Do we have ...
Views: 994 - 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 - Am I the Only One Struggling with Anxiety? - by Submitted on Nov 29, 2018 from Sheryl PaulPeople often ask me why they’re struggling with relationship anxiety or social anxiety or any other kind of anxiety when other people seem to glide through life more effortlessly. The subtext embedded in the question is, “Is there something wrong with me?” or “Why am I being singled out or ...
Views: 1040 - Angels All Around Us - by Submitted on Nov 12, 2014 from Sheryl PaulThere is so much pain in this world. There’s personal pain that often takes the form of anxiety, depression, addictions, and intrusive thoughts. There’s the physical pain of illness, injury, and disabilities, both short-term and chronic. There’s relationship pain when we endure conflict with ...
Views: 1456 - Anxiety and Numbness - by Submitted on May 13, 2016 from Sheryl PaulI often receive a version of the following email: "Is indifference a sign of relationship anxiety? My partner and I haven't seen each other in two weeks and I feel nothing. I've shut down. I don't care if we split up. My partner even cheated on me and I felt nothing. I don't seem to care ...
Views: 1496 - 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 - 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 - Anxiety is Not an Accident - by Submitted on Nov 24, 2014 from Sheryl PaulIf you follow my work you know that I view anxiety quite differently than most people. Instead of seeing it as something to eliminate as quickly as possible – usually with medication – I see it as the soul’s way of communicating, via the vessel of the body, that something is awry inside and is ...
Views: 1804 - Anxiety is Not Your Destiny - by Submitted on Nov 17, 2014 from Sheryl Paul“I’m just an anxious person,” I often hear my clients and program members say. The statement underlines a common globalization belief intrinsic to many who struggle with anxiety, which is: I’m anxious, I’ve always been anxious and I’ll always be anxious. In other words, anxiety is just in my ...
Views: 1684 - At the Heart of Anxiety - by Submitted on Oct 17, 2018 from Sheryl Paul“The final stage of healing is using what happens to you to help other people. That is healing in itself.” – Gloria Steinem “Why me?” people often ask when they’re dragged into the underworld of anxiety in any form. “Why do they have it so easy? Why does it look like everyone else glides ...
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