Boss overworking you? Friends trying to walk all over you? Partner being a little too pushy? We’ve all been there. Many people struggle to advocate for themselves and set boundaries, leading to frustration, annoyance, and burnout.
In a world that constantly pulls our attention in a hundred different directions, mindfulness offers something powerful: the ability to come back to the present moment.
When there’s so much shame and stigma around the experience of a disorder, but also around the disorder itself, it makes it hard to find your community. Skin picking disorder and other BFRBs are often wrongly considered an afterthought, a bad habit, or an accompanying behavior to a condition, and are not given the proper education, research, understanding, commitment and funding that they deserve. And where do we gather?
If you have ever felt strangely off the week after daylight saving time, you are not imagining it. You go to bed at what used to feel normal, but you toss and turn. You wake up groggy. You feel a little more irritable, less focused, maybe slightly wired at night but exhausted in the morning. It is only one hour on the clock, but biologically it is more than that.
Panic disorder is more than “just anxiety.” It involves sudden, intense waves of fear and panic attacks that can appear without warning and feel overwhelming in the moment. Symptoms often include a racing heart, shortness of breath, dizziness, chest tightness, nausea, or a fear of losing control. Because these sensations feel so physical, many people worry something is seriously wrong with their body, which can keep the panic cycle going.
If you’ve lived through sexual exploitation, abuse, neglect, trauma, or violence, you may carry things that others cannot see. You might experience memories that show up when you least expect them, a body that feels tense, numb, or disconnected, or a sense that something inside you has shifted even if you cannot fully explain how.
