As people go through life they tend to experience a cascade of positive and negative emotions such as happiness, excitement, joy, stress, anxiety, agitation, anger, and sadness. All of these emotional states of being are a natural and normal part of life and the human condition.

Among my clients, I find this to be a relatively frequent theme. And it is not surprising: in our society of super-achievers who are expected to multi-task 24/7, we are always on, always wondering what we forgot to do, or should be doing, always questioning and doubting ourselves, hence only strengthening the self-doubt: Am I Enough?

For a quick grammar refresher, pronouns are the articles used to describe a person or persons in the third person. Singular pronouns are gendered! For example, they are he, him, his, she, her, and hers. Gendered pronouns mean that depending on whether the person you are talking about in the third person is female or male, you use either she, hers for female and him, his for male.

However you feel your feelings, consider reacquainting yourself with them as we enter this new year. Sometimes, it may be embracing the uncomfortable, but we become closer to our truest selves as we emerge to embrace, release, and feel all our feelings.

Although rumination occurs naturally from time to time, when it feels like your mind is running a mile a minute, it can really feel distressing, overwhelming and endless. Times like these, you may wonder, is there anything that can truly quiet the mind?

Depression and anxiety look very different in children than it does in adults. Often, these behaviors are perceived as strange, bizarre, erratic, or disobedient. Because of this, childhood depression and anxiety is often missed by parents, family, and school faculty.

The reality is that worrying is, more often than not, unproductive, but has the illusion of feeling productive when we engage in it. If we hash out possibilities and options over and over, we think that we are doing something about our fears and anxieties. Most of the time, it gets us nowhere, and only winds up causing further anxiety.

“Wait don’t eat yet, I need to take a picture for Instagram.” How many times have you or your friends uttered this phrase out loud? The impact of social media on shaping our thinking and behaviors can’t be discounted.

As we enter the holiday season, stressors can arise that impact our mental health. With less time to manage self-care and implement coping skills, there is a tool within us that can help ease the holiday strain: our vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is one of the longest nerves in our body and when activated, it triggers our parasympathetic nervous system, which counteracts the “flight-or-fight” responses brought on by stress. Thus, knowing how to increase our “vagal tone” effectively helps to lower those stress hormones and calms the nervous system.

Have you realized there is one voice in your life that constantly brings you down? Is it a total nag, harping on everything you do, never to be satisfied? Is that voice your own?

Here are some steps to help diminish that inner voice and disrupt that cycle: