In her book, Self-Compassion, Kristin Neff, Ph.D. offers a beautiful mantra she developed to help her deal with negative emotions, a reminder to treat herself with self-compassion when discomfort arises: “This is a moment of suffering. Suffering is part of life. May I be kind to myself in this moment. May I give myself the...

Mahatma Gandhi once said, “My imperfections and failures are as much a blessing from God as my successes and my talents and I lay them both at his feet.” In the last few months, I have been trying to follow Gandhi’s example by presenting God with all of my humiliations, rejections, and shortcomings and to...

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom” wrote Anais Nin. For me that day happened last July. I was vacationing with my family in Corolla, South Carolina, when all the pain I had been feeling for the last year bubbled to...

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain,” remarked the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung. “People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” Having started therapy a month ago, I...

In his book Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart, psychiatrist Mark Epstein tells the story of his first roommate in college, a guy named Steve, who signed up for the five hardest courses at Harvard and became obsessed with being the perfect student. He stopped playing his guitar, going out with friends, even stopped bathing....