“I am so worthless. I suck at everything, especially my job, relationships, keeping my car clean and letting my nail polish dry before I leave the house.”
I was having coffee with a friend the other day and the conversation turned to the struggle of body shaming (by others and ourselves) and body acceptance. We talked about the difficulty of loving our bodies in a culture where we are continually bombarded with messages from media, magazines, and movies that tell us our bodies are not acceptable unless they fit in the narrow definition of beauty.
Sign outside The Coffee Tree in Loveland, CO.
After this conversation with my friend, the topic continued swirling around in my head as I was writing my to-do list for the following day. Among the many chores listed (which, let’s be honest, I only completed half), I wrote down the single task: “Read Body Positive Blogs.”Continue reading “8 Body Positive Blogs You Should Read Right Now”→
Old Bridge crossing the Animas River in Durango, Colorado. Photo Courtesy of Arianna Smith Counseling LLC.
2017 is right around the corner. It’s so easy to get caught up in day-to-day worries – especially with the holiday madness – that we forget to acknowledge how far we have come on our journey in the past year.
So, I invite you to find some quiet time today (or even just a bit quieter than your normal day) to just sit and reflect on the past year.
What was life like for you 1 year ago? 5 years ago? How have you grown? How has your view of yourself or your life shifted? Continue reading “The Journey”→
If you aren’t familiar with the term “Highly Sensitive Person”, it refers to about 20% of the population that possess a unique sensory processing trait that allows them to pick up more on subtleties in the environment, resulting in deeper processing and often being easily overwhelmed with stimuli. (To learn more, you can visit this website:www.hsperson.com).
The infamous Santa Bed figurine. Photo Courtesy of Arianna Smith Counseling LLC.
Does anyone else feel like the world suddenly gets put into fast forward when the holidays start to come around? Come mid-November, I feel I am given a tremendous to-do list of holiday duties that are not even important to me.
1. Take advantage of Black Friday deals. 2. Find an ugly Christmas Sweater. 3. Watch ‘Love, Actually’ for the 30th time. 4. Learn how to make pumpkin rolls. 5. Realize that it’s now December and it’s too late to make pumpkin rolls. 6. Instead decide to learn how to make peppermint bark. 7. Get sucked into a Netflix abyss and spend the evening eating candy canes on the couch.
And it goes on.
While I have developed many ways to cope with overwhelm in most circumstances, the holidays can be a time that I run myself ragged. I find myself inundated with unrealistic expectations of myself and my time.