Relations & Reflections

I'm afraid if she has a girlfriend and I don't, it means _______________. And that means that she will _____________, and then I will be ________________. Remember, your fear is there for a reason. You won't have much success at polyamory until you nail it down and bring it out into the daylight where you have the power to address it. Whatever the

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Dr. Kristin Neff is a researcher and professor at the University of Texas at Austin. She runs the Self-Compassion Research Lab, where she studies how we develop and practice self-compassion. According to Neff, self-compassion has three elements: self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness.4 Here are abbreviated definitions for each of these:

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Rather than expressing guesses as to your partner's motivations, talk about your own feelings (remember those feelings that we own?). And form them using statements that begin with "I" rather than "you." For example, if your partner was late picking you up from work, you might say, "I feel abandoned and annoyed when you are late picking me up. I

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Certainly, the people we love inspire us to heights of love and compassion that we might have never achieved otherwise, but to really scale those heights, we often have to go to the depths of who we are, light/shadow, good/evil, loving/destructive, and figure out our own stuff in order to love them better. So I’m not sure it’s an either/or but a

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Joy is as thorny and sharp as any of the dark emotions. To love someone fiercely, to believe in something with your whole heart, to celebrate a fleeting moment in time, to fully engage in a life that doesn’t come with guarantees—these are risks that involve vulnerability and often pain. When we lose our tolerance for discomfort, we lose joy. In

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We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable and powerful selves to be deeply seen and known, and when we honor the spiritual connection that grows from that offering with trust, respect, kindness, and affection. Love is not something we give or get; it is something that we nurture and grow, a connection that can only be cultivated between

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To prepare for writing my book on shame, I read everything I could find on compassion. I ultimately found a powerful fit between the stories I heard in the interviews and the work of American Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön. In her book The Places That Scare You, Chödrön writes, “When we practice generating compassion, we can expect to experience the

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Anne Robertson, a Methodist pastor, writer, and executive director of the Massachusetts Bible Society, explains how the Greek origins of the words happiness and joy hold important meaning for us today. She explains that the Greek word for happiness is makarios, which was used to describe the freedom of the rich from normal cares and worries, or to

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Emotions come from within each of us and are usually the result of a combination of programming, past life experiences and our own natural inclinations. Barring cases of abuse or violence, it's important to understand that your emotions are yours and yours alone. Therefore, we should avoid disempowering ourselves by blaming others for making us

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