I recently started working with my own talk therapist to dive deeper and heal my own emotional trauma.

The thing about emotional trauma, is that it is insidious...and sometimes we can go through life not even realizing that there were profound moments in our lives that have had a tremendous impact on us.

Most trauma is *relational*, as my dear friend and colleague Somatic Experiencing therapist & trauma expert Lauryn Arkin-Kimmel recently pointed out to me.

Even when encountering a trauma like a car accident, we feel the deep emotional pain of feeling alone and isolated in our recovery.

And the way we love often becomes colored by the way our loved ones loved us and the way we perceived and interpreted love. We often re-enact those patterns in our current relationships.

Whatever your wounds are, it’s futile to get angry at someone else for not showing up the way you want them to.

Accept others for who they are and who they aren’t. That’s REAL LOVE.

Find compassion in another's limitations, and first and foremost find compassion with your own limitations.

Everyone has their emotional trauma that they bring to the table. If you take it personally, you’re just creating a space for victimhood and suffering.

When you truly know your own wounds, you break free of the cycle. You can give yourself what you’re looking for from others...and then don’t be surprised if they end up giving you what you wanted all along.

Relationships are complicated, but the simplest formula for success is to treat yourself with the utmost compassion and respect.

Treat yourself as if you were your only child. Have reverence for your pain, but know that it’s only old stories being resurfaced.

You get to choose whether to keep playing the story over again or whether it’s just old energy coming up to clear.

Magic happens in the awareness. Always.
When you really know yourself, when you can study yourself like an observer, then you *always* know exactly how to treat you...