✨Mind✨Body✨Spirit✨Medicine✨ Join more than 800+ subscribers who have already signed up for the newsletter, and get holistic mental health and wellness strategy and inspiration in your inbox every week. ✨ ✨✨ Check out the links to download your (FREE) copy of the Bliss Kit and learn 4 life-changing strategies to help you cultivate more ease, joy, and inner peace. I can't wait to see where it takes you!
free will?
Hey Reader,
A few years ago I noticed this idea circulating on social media: that nobody can make you feel any particular way. Hand-in-hand with this belief, some self-help gurus also like to tell us that we're entirely responsible for our emotions.
But try to apply this belief to your own life and you'll quickly start feeling confused, frustrated, and like a failure.
Because the truth isn't quite so simple. No matter how hard you try, no matter how many gratitude lists you write and how many "good vibes" you try to infuse into your life, you simply can't control all of your emotions. That's not how emotions work.
Life can be really friggin' hard, Reader.
It's natural to feel scared and sad when you hear the news of war. It's natural to feel stressed when you're living in a society that makes it hard for you to meet your basic needs. And if you don't feel an ache in your heart when you witness suffering, it's only because you're not paying attention.
To say that other people or situations can't make you feel a certain way is a fallacy.
If your boss storms at your desk and starts yelling at you, your blood is immediately going to be flooded with stress hormones, your muscles will get tense, and you will feel the effects of your physiological stress response on an emotional level.
Your mind will then automatically kick into high alert, scrambling to identify all the solutions it can think of to escape the threat.
These are primary emotions, and you have no control over any of these reactions.
What you can learn to control, however, is what you do next.
Anytime you notice an uncomfortable emotion arise, you have a choice.
You can fight against the truth—and create more tension for yourself as you try to paddle upstream on the emotional river that's raging inside of you,—or, you can soften into it, experience the sensations, witness the thoughts, let your body cry or moan or shake if it wants to, and in so doing, you can learn to float.
Because the truth is, you can't control what happens to you or around you. You can't control the way your emotional body reacts. The only thing you have any control over is what you do with it.
Inner peace isn't always the intuitive path. It's not always the easy path. And it's not a passive path, either.
But it is path of truth and love, and it's the path I want to choose, especially amidst so much bleak news in the world. Which means opening my heart up to the fullness of life's experience as much as I can, even, and especially, when it hurts.
You too?
Warmly,
Katerina
P.S. Do you deal with chronic pain? I had the great honor of being invited as a panelist on the the Overcome Chronic Pain Interview Series 2.0 lead by my friend, Catherine Courtice.
She's brought together 20+ the world’ top medical experts for this complimentary series on how to learn to manage your chronic pain, and I'm delighted be one of them!
You can get access to all of it by clicking here: https://interviews.overcomechronicpain.net/Katerina-Baratta
I can't wait to hear what you think!
Heal the root causes of stress and anxiety
Katerina Baratta, MS, LAc
✨Mind✨Body✨Spirit✨Medicine✨ Join more than 800+ subscribers who have already signed up for the newsletter, and get holistic mental health and wellness strategy and inspiration in your inbox every week. ✨ ✨✨ Check out the links to download your (FREE) copy of the Bliss Kit and learn 4 life-changing strategies to help you cultivate more ease, joy, and inner peace. I can't wait to see where it takes you!
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