by Dr. Heléna Kate | Nov 12, 2018 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog, Empowered Action, Self Awareness, Uncategorized
Wondering if you are living in your truth? Use these signs to help you see the way.
You are Happy. Not just happy because things are going your way, but really, deeply happy regardless of how things are going. When we are aligned with our inner truth, we feel happy.
You Feel Congruent. When you are living your truth, your insides and your outsides match. You feel you are with the right people doing the right things most of the time.
You Have Lots of Energy. An abundance of energy is the result of being in our truth. Even if facing a serious illness, people aligned with their truth have more energy and are more vivacious than those who might be facing something similar without such alignment.
You Feel Inspired. Being connected with your inner truth leaves you feeling inspired. When you are connected with your inner truth you feel creative and naturally want to contribute to the world around you.
You Feel Confident. There is nothing as good for your confidence as being connected to your truth. When you are connected to your truth, you trust in what is right for you, you know what you know and what you don’t, and you feel comfortable right where you are.
Life is Informative. When you are connected to your truth, life is not a series of challenges to get past but rather a series of events to help you unfold even more. Being in your truth helps you see the informative nature of all things.
You Can Be Generous. When you are in your truth, you naturally have overflow. Being in your truth means not being in all the things that block your truth. As a result, you have an abundance of resources that you can be generous with.
Ready to sink more into living your truth? See my blog post >>> \”Uncovering Your Souls True Voice.\”
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Nov 7, 2018 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog, Empowered Action, Self Awareness, Uncategorized
One of the most direct ways to create a better life and a better world is to cultivate compassion. Compassion directed inward connects us with our truth and leaves us loving ourselves. Compassion directed outward decreases disagreements and misunderstandings.
When we judge and condemn aspects of ourselves (and aspects of others), we can find ourselves in inner discomfort or creating discomfort in those around us. When we are able to bring compassion into each situation, we deepen our love of ourselves and have a more positive effect on the world.
Compassion is the ability to understand the experience of another person or even an aspect of ourselves. Our compassion sees the other and acknowledges the experience as real and valid. It does not judge or look for who is to blame, but simply honors what is. A compassionate response sees beyond the story lines and the polarities to the deeper truth of the matter.
Many of our problems (both interior and exterior) can be solved by offering compassion. When we offer compassion to ourselves, we honor our experience and acknowledge our truth.
Compassion toward ourselves stops us from getting caught in the trap of self-criticism and the potential self-negating actions that follow. This does not mean we do not hold ourselves accountable—just that we offer understanding and care with our accountability. Compassion toward others offers them the same gifts.
Compassion is so powerful because it offers the following:
Compassion acknowledges. A compassionate approach is one that sees another where he or she is, how he or she feels, without the need to overlay wisdom, platitudes, or judgments.
Compassion honors. Compassion comes with deep respect for another’s truth, regardless of what that truth is. A compassionate person does not need to prove that an alternative way of being or viewing things is important or necessary.
Compassion does not blame. Compassion does not need to point fingers or assess responsibility. A compassionate person can see all sides of the situation and understand that all have a place and a right to exist.
Compassion is most often cultivated through being misunderstood or mistreated ourselves. This pain has the potential to wake us up to a deeper reality. After we have stood on more than one side of a disagreement, it is more challenging to maintain the “someone is right/someone is wrong” perspective.
We can actively cultivate our own compassion by choosing to see all sides of issues as they arise. We are not so much waiting for life to crack us open but rather using each moment to expand our own awareness. We put ourselves in another person’s shoes as a moment-to-moment practice of our life.
This gift of compassion makes way for our growth as well as the growth of those around us and works to heal the challenges we face rather than contributing to them, all of which aids in the creation of an environment ripe for self-love and offering healing to the world.
Being self-compassionate is also a key to living your truth. Read more at >>> \”Uncovering Your Souls True Voice.\”
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Oct 18, 2018 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog, Empowered Action, Self Awareness, Uncategorized
As one of the primary emotions, shame is a part of the human experience you’re your struggling with feelings of shame, use these quotes to spark some gentleness with yourself, and gratitude within.
Mistakes Are Okay
\”Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.\” – Vincent Van Gogh
There\’s an ebb and flow to life, and everyone is in it together. We all make decisions that lead to outcomes we\’d rather not experience. Sometimes, we act from a place of fear or resentment, or intentionally cause harm to those around us. Sometimes, we are naive or have inaccurate information. While mistakes are inevitable, what action do you want to choose from here?
Consider Inner Vs. Outer Factors
\”You cannot change the wind, but you can adjust the sails.” – Bertha Calloway
While the circumstances that triggered your feeling of shame may or may not be in your control, your choice to hang out in shame is within your control. We can honor the moment of shame but not linger there. How can you take care of yourself so that the shame can shift?
What If…
“You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” – A.A. Milne/Christopher Robin
Shame can be rooted in untruths told to us by others. What if your courage, strength, and brilliance is greater than you\’ve ever believed, and the only thing stopping you are your thoughts?
Consider the Ripple
“Every action in our lives touches on some chord that will vibrate in eternity.” – Edwin Hubbel Chapin
Whatever the reasons for your experience of shame, remember your positive impact as well. Your choices will ripple out and likely far outweigh your mistakes. What impact do you want to have on others?
Shift to Gratitude
\”Sometimes we should express our gratitude for the small and simple things like the scent of the rain, the taste of your favorite food, or the sound of a loved one\’s voice.\” – Joseph B. Wirthlin
One of the easiest ways to change our emotional experience is to come into our hearts. Look around and consider what you can feel grateful for in this moment. Then – and this is the trick – don\’t just think about gratitude, but actually invite in the feeling. What can you feel grateful for now?
Hang Out with a Dog
\”Dogs have boundless enthusiasm but no sense of shame. I should have a dog as a life coach.\” – Moby
We can learn a lot from animals, and dogs are a great example of (usually) living without shame. It\’s possible to draw energy from a memory of an animal or person you admire for their shameless way of being. What memory makes you smile?
Looking for more inspiration to overcome shame? Check out my personal share about >>> \”Self Love.\”
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Oct 14, 2018 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog, Empowered Action, Self Awareness, Uncategorized
I have been forged in the fire of doubt, lies, and forgetfulness, and I am made of self-love.
In addition to granting us the ability to be happier and make a greater positive impact in the world, self-love is an inoculation against some of the most challenging experiences in life. It is the armor of the seekers, the healers, and the transformational mavericks of the world.
For me, this knowledge was hard won. While I can look back to my childhood and find a connection with the divine starting as early as I can remember and an unrelenting urge to help and heal for just as long, self-love was virtually absent.
The earlier part of my life was dominated by pain. Everything hurt, but I did not know how I felt. Although I had people around me, I had little feeling of connectedness with them. And, I believed quite completely that there was something inherently wrong with me.
The first insight that I got about self-love came about when I had my son. I simply wanted more for him than what I had myself and I knew I needed to learn how to get it so I could teach him to do the same. To this day, I know that if it weren’t for my love of him, I very likely would have stayed mired in my pain.
Inspired by my son, I set out—destination unknown. Before too long, I discovered that what I was looking for was love: pure, undeniable love of the self.
Lack of self-love can show up as unhealthy choices, judgments about our unhealthy choices, an unrelenting ache, or a feeling that we are not quite expressing our full light. But at its root there is a belief that there is something inherently wrong with who we are.
This is the place where no self-love is present.
Otherwise, why would we simply just not let ourselves be who we are?
Signs that we truly love ourselves are unconditional acceptance –even of the messy or seemingly inconsequential parts, staying on our own side regardless of what happens, holding ourselves accountable only for what is truly ours, and loving ourselves regardless of our mistakes.
If we pay attention to what is underneath when we are not doing these things, we see in these shadowy moments of self-negation where our self-love is most needed.
Here in the crevasses between the more positive and accepted parts of ourselves, we can find the (sometimes) hidden belief that something is wrong with us. It is perhaps the most powerful lie that we can believe in the course of our lives –and many of us do.
Not only is it debilitating in our own inner experience, but this lie can be used to get us to back down, back off, or give up by anyone who is looking to co-opt our light, serve their personal agenda, or stop our forces of healing and transformation.
So, let us, each one of us, set the record straight.
Each one of us is an ideally crafted expression with a purpose and place. There are no mistakes. We are not all supposed to be 5 foot 10 inches tall, with brown hair, and good at math. Nor are our insides supposed to be the same, or our emotional expressions, or our ways of perceiving the world.
But it is not enough to know this in our minds – which most of us do. It must be etched on our bones and woven into our soul. Without that, it is a hollow shell of a belief that we merely try to hide our lack of self-worth under.
Fortunately for us, life has a built in tool to help us learn to love ourselves more and more completely. The difficult moments of our lives are not designed to show us what is wrong with us but rather to show us the path back to ourselves by displaying the illusion. In this process, we learn what self-love truly is.
When facing the difficult circumstances of life, we can use them to feed the part of us that believes that there is something wrong with us or we can use them to help us see what we are not loving about ourselves and learn to love ourselves more completely. When we do this we become healthy, happier, and more resilient.
My prayer for you is that you can pause your usual interpretations of yourself to see the perfection of who you are and that you are willing to lovingly seek out the environments that support your most positive expression.
There is no one else like you. Who you are is perfect, sacred, and very needed.
Do you ever have trouble loving yourself because you feel ashamed? If so, please see my article >>> \”What is Wrong With Me? Healing From Toxic Shame.\”
by Dr. Heléna Kate | Oct 12, 2018 | Dr. Heléna Kate's Blog, Empowered Action, Self Awareness, Uncategorized
As Brene Brown says, guilt is the feeling that comes from having done something bad. Shame is the feeling that comes from feeling you are bad. While shame can have a positive impact, such as helping us to socially conform, very often when people speak of shame, they are talking about toxic shame.
The base of our toxic shame is often built in our early life and/or as the result of unhealthy relationships or difficult societally stigmatized life events. Once the path has been laid, then it is that much easier to set off a chain reaction called a shame spiral.
Most of us have had this experience. First we make a mistake. Then we judge ourselves for the mistake. We withhold love and acceptance from ourselves, and in this weakened state, we continue to make more bad choices, feel more shame, and withhold more love and acceptance.
Shame spirals can last for any length of time. In one way of looking at things, the bad choices and negative self-talk on a daily basis can be seen as a constant shame spiral. However, most often we are talking about an acute experience that sets off one or more of our triggers.
The first step in making a change is awareness. We need to be aware enough of the problem that we can see where we might be adding new behaviors to it. After you become aware of your struggles with shame and the shame spirals that rule the difficult parts of your life, then you can start to employ methods to get yourself out of shame and back on track.
Here are six steps to help you stop a shame spiral:
1. Know your triggers. Sometimes the best remedy is to stop a spiral before it even happens by avoiding or working around triggers. But even when you don’t, if you know your triggers, then you can act that much faster after one of them has been activated. If, for example, “failing” publicly is a trigger, then you know to immediately take some counteractive measures should you bomb a presentation.
2. Hear your inner voice. What you may or may not be aware of is that your shame spiral is led by your inner critic. This inner voice will tell you all the ways that you messed up, how people are judging you, and what negative things to think about yourself. Because it has an inside view of what you are most ashamed of, this voice is expertly targeted at your weakest points. When you tune into this voice, you can set it straight.
3. Don’t indulge in bad habits. The bad habits are the things you do when you are feeling shame that make you feel even more ashamed. You make a choice to fight with someone that you care about, drink too much, or not do something important that needs to get done. You might wonder why on earth we would do more “stupid” things when we am already feeling so bad, but shame impairs our judgment and often leads to forms of disassociation that make it difficult to make good decisions.
4. Love yourself anyway. Mistakes happen. Bad choices get made. In order to stop a shame spiral, we need to accept ourselves and our choices. We don’t need to condone them, but being on our own side and being understanding is key to stopping the shame from getting worse. So, regardless of how many bad choices you have made, offer some love and support to yourself. You did not make those choices because you are a bad person. You made them because you didn’t know what to do or couldn’t choose it at the moment. Chances are that was because of some past traumas in your life.
5. Choose supportive behaviors. If our bad habits can bring us down, our good habits can bring us up. When we get triggered, we can actively choose to do things that help us feel better rather than worse. We can look at the things we have done right. We can participate in an activity that helps us feel better.
6. Connect with loved ones. This is a supportive behavior that deserves its own category. Because shame thrives on secrecy, connecting with someone who really sees you for who you are can be one of the best antidotes to shame. This can be very hard for people who are experiencing shame, but if you can muscle through the discomfort, you will soon find yourself free from your feelings of shame.
It is never too late to stop a shame spiral. That little voice telling you that it is too late is only part of the shame spiral itself. It does not matter how deeply you feel that you have dug yourself down—you can turn it around. Keep trying. Keep loving yourself and shame will become less and less a part of your life.
For more ideas about overcoming shame spirals, check out my article >>> \”What is Wrong With Me? Healing From Toxic Shame.\”
