The feelings wheel can help guide us from our general feeling down into the specific experience we are having. And knowing what’s really going on inside can help us see what we might need in that moment.

Things will go wrong; outcomes won’t match intentions. In the face of this, self-compassion is essential.

Let’s not let uncertainty or self-consciousness stop us from showing up for the people we love or care about.

Guilt will have us denying our needs and our inner knowing, but remorse will never lead us astray.

Today we have a much better picture of ADHD as a broader challenge with self-regulation, rather than specifically a deficit of attention and/or hyperactivity.

If we are not informed and intentional about how we sit with our feelings, we can end up just stewing in them and staying stuck, or ruminating and reinforcing a harmful belief.

Most of us, even those of us with the most loving and well-meaning caregivers and teachers, did not receive an emotional education. We learned to use a fork, to tie our shoes, to read and tell time. To share and to wait our turn. But not about the anger of having to share, or the frustration of waiting, or the embarrassment of being the last to read. 

“If someone close to us dies, then, based on what we know about object-trace cells, our neurons still fire every time we expect our loved one to be in the room. And this neural trace persists until we can learn that our loved one is never going to be in our physical world again.”

As the anniversary of a loss or a trauma approaches, it’s often the case that our bodies register the signs before we consciously take note of the calendar.