Creating a Year of Enchantment

When was the last time you felt enchanted? When experiencing enchantment, you’re filled with delight, you’re drawn towards the image, the item or the experience, and it creates a great feeling of pleasure. When you are enchanted you are captivated, fascinated, and inspired. 

If you’ve spent some time reflecting back on 2023, have you considered what brought you a feeling of enchantment in this past year? If not, take a look back and ask yourself, how often did I feel delighted, filled with great pleasure, and deeply inspired? As you reflect back on 2023, how alive, open-hearted, and charmed did you feel?

Imagine if being inspired, enchanted, and captivated became your primary pursuit in 2024. How different might your year ahead look? 

If you are feeling less enchanted as you reflect back over the past year, that’s ok! When you have time to deeply consider what enchantment looks like, feels like, and means to you, take a moment and really describe in detail, what does bring you a feeling of enchantment? Deeply consider what captivates your full attention, what fills you with pleasure and inspiration? I recommend beginning an enchantment journal for 2024. It can be a small pocket sized notebook that you can access easily throughout the day. If you prefer tech, you can start a page on your notes app in your phone, titling it ENCHANTMENT 2024. If you like to get fancy with your journaling, you can always make it colorful, crafty, and creative!

When you have some time to deeply reflect on what brings you a feeling of enchantment, begin to write down what you already know creates this feeling for you. For example, it could be something as simple as seeing the steam rise from your morning coffee or tea. Feeling enchanted may arise from having a good, long laugh with someone you care about, or it could be a moment of capturing colorful sunrise or sunset or rainbow. You might feel enchanted by a song, a great book, the taste of chocolate, or seeing a new leaf sprouting from the plant in your window. You might feel enchanted by the sweet face of a pet or a child, or from seeing a piece of art, a cloud formation, a tree, or a sparkling stone. You might feel enchanted by so many more things than you recognize, or that you take the time to fully notice in your day to day life. What brings you this feeling of captivation and delight is completely unique to you. Continue to notice, and to pay attention to these moments no matter whether they are small or large, simple or grand, and write them all down to have access to when you are feeling disenchanted or uninspired, or when you just need to have a smile.

Once you have your initial list, what you already know captivates your full attention, take a moment and reflect on it. How much of what enchants you costs a lot of money? How much of it has to do with success, striving, possessing, or acquiring? Most likely not too much. When we are enchanted we are not wanting, we are experiencing something wonderful, we are one with the present moment. And sure, maybe something enchanting may cost money, but it is definitely not a requirement. 

Spend time looking at your starting list and allow yourself to begin to add to it consistently. When you capture something enchanting, write it down after the moment or experience has moved on, try not to disrupt any of these beautiful moments! In my therapy practice, I recommend reflecting to all of my clients to keep a “what went well today” journal. This is about helping the usual anxious, stressed, worried, or negative mind take a break. When you reflect on what went well today you can shift your attention away from worry, negative self-talk, and projecting stress into the next day. Typically I recommend keeping a daily journal to reflect on what went well today? What wins did I have today? What am I most grateful for today? And be sure to add and include, what enchanted me today? When you focus on what went well, what wins you had, what you are most grateful for, and now adding this focus of, what enchanted me today, you can shift out of fear, negativity, and lack—and into contentment, delight and joy. 

When you are noticing the experience of enchantment, captivation, and pleasure in the moment it’s occurring, take time to really savor it. When we savor something pleasurable, we are creating an opportunity to feel full of contentment. When we are savoring the present moment, we are delighting in the experience of being delighted! When you are savoring, you are practicing mindfulness as you are fully immersed in the present moment, the here and the now. Savoring allows your mind is focusing on the good, and you can feel a sense of pleasure and gratitude as you are experiencing it.

When you are reflecting on moments of enchantment and writing them down as a reflection process at the end of the day, take time to savor each element you have experienced. Can you linger in the feeling of enchantment, let it fully enter your being in mind, body and spirit, and allow it to be re-experienced in a way that you feel the delight all over again?

This process of allowing yourself to be present, to experience pleasure, and to re-experience it upon reflection can impact your inner emotional world, your mindset, and your mood in a way that you can experience your own inner ability to create an internal shift. Moods are temporary and usually impacted by experiences, however, if a mood is lingering outside of the experience and it doesn’t feel great, you can bring in this reflective practice and try savoring and see if you can impact your mood in this helpful and positive way. When you can, it feels very empowering, life enhancing, and even healing. Allow yourself this momentary treat of reflection, and be sure to repeat it daily. We get good at what we practice, and this repetition of savoring enchantment offers an opportunity to create positive change in mind, body, and spirt.

Imagine the year ahead as one where your primary focus becomes searching for these moments of enchantment every single day. Imagine the year ahead as one where you notice the good, savor it, linger in it, practice the process of savoring, and search for more. Imagine the year ahead as a year where following what enchants you, what makes you feel most alive, open-heated, and fulfilled becomes your Full-Time pursuit. Here’s to creating enchantment in 2024!

Compassionate Eating: How to Be Kind to Yourself Through Emotional Eating Struggles

The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines compassion as, “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.” Being compassionate means to suffer along with someone, to understand it, and to offer support to help release the suffering.

When talking about compassionate eating as a concept, I am not asking you to suffer with your food, or to feel any sort of distress about food or eating. Compassionate eating is more about how to be with yourself if you struggle with emotional eating, and the ways that compassion can offer relief from some of the suffering you may experience as a result of emotional eating patterns. If you struggle with negative self-talk, or if you experience any other internal distress as it relates to the process of eating and food choices you make, engaging with compassionate eating as a practice may help to alleviate some of the internal suffering that you experience.

Many who struggle with emotional eating, or any sort of disordered eating pattern, often feel a sense of persistent guilt and shame based on their food choices. The negative self-talk can be a precursor to eating, something said while eating, and most certainly following a food choice that is eaten out of emotional distress and not deemed “the right choice” or “perfect.” For example, prior to eating, negative self-talk might sound something like, “I shouldn’t eat this.” Negative self-talk during the process of eating might sound like, “I shouldn’t be eating this,” and after eating it might sound like, “I shouldn’t have eaten that…” 

There is a lot of overlap with each of these negative self-talk circumstances—and it all comes down to the shoulds. When we Should ourselves, we are immediately putting ourselves into a place where we are subjected to experiencing guilt and shame. The message of the emotion guilt signals to us is, I did something wrong, where as the message of the emotion shame signals, I am something wrong. If I tell myself, I shouldn’t be____________ (fill in the blank with anything) I am signaling through emotion (guilt/shame) inherent internal distress.

If I’m saying to myself “I shouldn’t be doing this,” no matter what “this” is, it signals that it must be wrong, bad, shameful, embarrassing, or I’m weak, and so on. The emotional discomfort that follows can lead to painful and really cruel thoughts about ourselves including not being good enough, not in control enough, not perfect enough, not enough just as I am. These feelings can trigger a negative thought loop and an internal shame spiral that may trigger more emotional eating, or any other negative self-soothing behaviors out of this feeling of deep internal suffering that something is wrong with me.

This is where compassionate eating steps in to help alleviate this pattern of deep internal suffering. Internal negativity and shame, inducing negative self-talk, is a form of suffering. The negative beliefs (e.g. I’m not good enough) that are internalized and reinforced become a pattern of low self-worth due to feeling not good enough, or feeling like a failure, or any other negative internalized belief. Self-compassion is the ability to suffer with oneself in a hope to relieve the suffering in a way that neutralizes the negative self-talk. When you offer yourself true self-compassion, you are allowing yourself to hold space for your feelings and experiences in a non-judgmental way. This can have a neutralizing or releasing impact on the discomfort you are experiencing. Giving yourself compassion allows the experience of becoming sympathetic towards yourself—with a desire to alleviate that suffering. 

Kristin Neff, who literally wrote the book on self-compassion, (which I highly recommend) breaks down the process of practicing self-compassion into these three elements:

1. Mindfulness

2. Self-kindness

3. Common humanity

The first is about how when we bring mindful awareness to a feeling or experience we are seeing it more broadly and without judgment, versus the felt state of over-identification with the suffering (e.g. I am not good enough, or I’m a failure) that triggers the negative self-talk. The second element of self-compassion is self-kindness. This process helps to release the self-judgement, I am ok versus I am a bad, weak, or a not a good enough person. The third element is creating a sense of common humanity, bringing in the awareness that the feelings and experiences are universal. This opens us to the understanding that suffering simply cannot be avoided if one is a human, and allows a feeling of not being alone in the suffering and discomfort of one’s own experiences, emotions, and behaviors.

Practicing self-compassion in a form of compassionate eating when struggling with emotional eating might look and sound something like this:

1. Mindful awareness of the feeling/experience: “I feel shame for eating something when I wasn’t hungry despite my attempts to be more mindful of my hunger and full cues, I want to change my emotional eating patterns and I feel really sad when I feel as though I’ve failed.”

2. Self-kindness is creating an opportunity to speak to yourself as you would a friend, loved one, or anyone you care about. Consider a good friend came to you with the same feeling or experience, you might say to them: “I understand why you feel so disappointed and down on yourself, you have been working really hard to eat more mindfully and intuitively, however, please know that no one is perfect and everyone struggles at times. What you are trying to accomplish is really challenging and takes time. I’m here for you and want to support you as you continue to heal, I believe in you.” Turn the same sentiment inward, say all of this to yourself. If you have a hard time being kind to yourself, imagine that it’s as if a friend, mentor, family member, or even your pet is saying it to you. Really let it sink in and offer you comfort. 

3. Common humanity is the ability to recognize the universality of the feeling, it might sound something like this: “I can recognize that this is a part of the human experience, at times everyone feels shame or disappointed in a choice they make.” This practice of self-compassion is asking yourself, can you be more gentle with yourself? Can you see that you were having a really bad day and struggling and the food felt like the only option you had to feel better at the time? Changing a pattern of behavior is really, really difficult. It takes so much time, effort, focus, intention, and practice to do. The process of self-compassion and being with yourself in this kinder, more gentle way allows you to heal some of the underlying negative mental and emotional patterns that are perpetuating the behavioral patterns. It all works together.

I recommend adding a daily self-compassion practice where you can check in with yourself consistently and begin to offer yourself this three step process. Go through the steps of offering yourself mindful awareness, self-kindness (just like you would to a friend) and giving yourself the opportunity to connect with the felt sense of the common humanity of your feelings and experiences. Remember that you get good at what you practice. This will feel hard at first. Remember that you most likely would never speak to someone else the way you speak to yourself in those negative self-talk moments. So why do you allow yourself to speak to yourself in this way? Most people don’t even notice the level of cruelty they inflict on themselves, and yet they feel the painful impact and discomfort that becomes self-created. Also, many people fear that being kind and gentle with themselves will make them feel like they get a pass, that they’ll never change if they aren’t uncomfortable or unkind to themselves. Maybe they received “tough love” or felt that they were shamed into doing things or being a certain way that was expected of them growing up and then they internalized this way of speaking to themselves. However, this cruelty never works in the long run. Unkindness, cruelty, and meanness lead to shame, pain, and suffering. These feelings usually lead to increased feeling of defeat, depression, anxiety, and fear. True change comes from encouragement, practice, self-awareness, empowerment, and more practice. Self-compassion offers a way of being with yourself that is more grounded, positive, and mindful. Compassionate eating offers of way of being with yourself and your experience with food and eating in a more kind, thoughtful, and empowered way.

The next time you find yourself in a negative thought loop, give the three step self-compassion practice a try and notice what happens for you. The next time you hear yourself saying “I should or shouldn’t be _____________, pause and try more compassionate self-talk instead and notice the outcome. Here’s to finding more inner peace, more peace with food, and more peace with your inner thoughts. Remember, you cannot heal your way out of being a human, but with practice you can love and accept yourself for exactly who you are in this moment.

What Exactly Is an EMDR Intensive?

Do you ever feel as though you are reliving the same patterns, or having the same recurring negative thoughts or experiences? Many of us are operating out of subconscious negative beliefs that are creating distressing patterns of thoughts, behaviors, and limiting our ability to feel worthy and deserving of the life we desire.

EMDR is a powerful therapeutic modality that helps to release these beliefs from our subconscious and unconscious minds, and allows us to live in a less uncomfortable, anxious, and fearful state of being. Through EMDR therapy we can release these limiting beliefs so that we can feel more empowered, confident, and safe in our daily lives.

One way to confront these limiting beliefs and negative cognitions is to do intensive EMDR therapy. This is where session times are extended so we can do a deep dive into releasing these beliefs about ourselves. Since I began offering EMDR intensives, I have had a lot of inquiries about why choose an EMDR intensive model over more traditional, weekly, 50 minute sessions. So I thought I’d write a little about what an EMDR intensive even is, and how to know if it might be right for you. (If you are not familiar with EMDR as a therapeutic modality, you can read a previous blog I wrote on the topic HERE or learn more about it from the EMDRIA homepage HERE.) 

An EMDR intensive is indeed, just as the name implies, intense. They are longer EMDR sessions (usually 2.5-hours, 4-hours, or even longer) where you focus for an extended period of time on your desired area of inner work. EMDR is considered a maximum exposure therapy, where you are reprocessing a specific trauma, memory, feeling state, or experience in a way that you are fully present with any lingering and unprocessed distress of that particular experience.

The discomfort that remains is based on a subjective level of distress you still experience when thinking about the memory. This is based on somatic, mental, and emotional discomfort. Through the bilateral stimulation of the brain, (and through the lens of the adaptive information processing model) repeated exposure and reprocessing of the memory allows the brain and body to release the physical, mental and emotional pain associated with the memory, so the distress level inevitably comes down. The goal is to have the distress become a 0 (subjectively on a 0-10 scale) where it feels that no distress remains present. The memory is then successfully reprocessed and released into your long term memory, rather than looping and causing triggering responses to your present life circumstances.

Once the distress is a 0, a positive cognition is created and reinforced through bilateral stimulation as well, and once it feels absolutely true (this is gauged subjectively on a number scale as well) as an inner felt sense, it is practiced with future templates. Imagining yourself accessing this new positive cognition in potentially distressing or triggering circumstances within the future helps to create new patterns and possibilities. Through this work you can now begin to respond and react within those future challenging moments in a more grounded and steady manner.

All that I’ve described so far is a very rough and quick overview, there are certainly many more elements incorporated into EMDR therapy, however this intended as just a basic gist. Our goal is to rewrite negative cognitions, or beliefs about the self, that have been created or reinforced through these distressing memories, experiences, and traumas. These experiences created beliefs about the self that perpetuated patterns of behaviors, thoughts, and feelings that can create negative internal experiences as well as difficulty feeling truly confident, hopeful, grounded, and worthy just as you are.

Through the inner work, you can release the trauma still stored mentally, physically, and emotionally, and therefore release the negative beliefs that have arisen out of those experiences. This creates a new way of existing within your life that is freeing and empowering.

With a traditional 50 minute session there is some preparation, potentially reprocessing and desensitization, verbal processing, grounding and re-stabilization in a relatively short time. With an EMDR intensive you are in that potentially reprocessing and desensitization phase for a much more extended period of time. I have found that a 2.5-hour EMDR intensive is similar to approximately 4 sessions when using the traditional, basic protocol. A 4-hour intensive is similar to approximately 6-7 sessions when using the traditional, basic protocol. There are always potentially other elements incorporated into sessions depending on each person’s individual needs along the way.

If you are someone who has done some personal work already and feels that EMDR could be helpful to resolve some traumatic memories, this could feel really nice, to get in a lot of therapy in a shorter, more intensive period of time. These intensives are useful if you find that you have some patterns that you seem to repeat in relationships, with money, with food, with negative self-talk, and with specific anxieties. Initially, we identify the primary negative cognition, and then use the protocol to work through these memories or experiences that seem to repeat themselves in a way that makes sense for you. 

For example, if you are someone who finds that you seek out relationships with people who are emotionally unavailable over and over, there may be a limiting believe or negative cognition that is stuck in your subconscious that can be worked through in a short series of EMDR intensives. We first identify the negative belief about yourself, and then work with the memories that have created or reinforced that belief. Or, if you are someone who seems to fall into the same patterns with food, or money and spending that you have repeatedly tried to change, this too could be reinforced subconsciously by a negative internalized belief that can be worked through with EMDR intensives. I have found intensives to be helpful for those struggling with perfectionism, creative blocks, resistance to or fear of change, specific anxieties (such as flying, driving over bridges…) and much more.

If you are interested in an EMDR intensive, it is best to reach out to a few certified EMDR therapists who offer them, who are also licensed in your state. Many therapists are willing to offer a 15-minute consultation where you can describe your current needs/goals and they will be able to determine if you may be a good candidate for intensive EMDR therapy. I am licensed in New York and Virginia, and therefore only can offer them to those currently living in either of those states. For people with chronic or complex post traumatic stress disorder who are just beginning treatment, those with a low distress tolerance, and for those with certain chronic conditions, I have found that traditional weekly sessions tend to work best, however, everything is truly determined on a case-by-case basis. 

I hope I’ve piqued your interest and maybe you will think about considering EMDR intensives as part of your personal growth, mental wellness, and emotional health process. Here’s to confronting our negative internalized beliefs head-on and creating a more empowered, confident self and living a life fully immersed in a feeling of worthiness. You deserve to feel your best and live your best life.