Life will always pull us to a balance. If we push ourselves too hard, we get overwhelmed and collapse. If we avoid life, we become discontented and restless. It can be so easy to get stuck oscillating between these two extremes. We avoid our responsibilities and passions for so long that we become panicked, believing we’ll never get anything done.

The way we talk to ourselves, our inner dialogue, has a profound impact on our mood and wellbeing. When our thoughts are a stream of negativity and shame, the voice of our inner critic can make us believe that we are unworthy of love. We get stuck in the belief that there is something fundamentally wrong with us.

Empathy, kindness and compassion are the great forces that bring positive change and energy into our world. When we receive them, we are able to let go of feelings of shame and worthlessness. We are able to heal, to move past our own brokenness into a space of growth and positive change for ourselves and the world.

Negative emotions can feel like a trap we can’t escape from, like an illness we don’t know how to cure, like a bad dream we can’t wake up from.  We learn along the way to rely on whatever strategies we can to dull the pain even for a short time and can end up spending our lives running from ourselves.

Perfectionism is tricky. It can sneak up on us, disguised as something good and healthy. We all want to live according to our values, to do the best we can by ourselves and others. We want to grow, to become our best selves. This pursuit is beautiful, as long as it makes space for all the parts of us, as long as it is grounded in the full spectrum of who we are. Anything that denies our authentic selves isn’t growth, isn’t the path to wellness.

The most profound yet simple thing I have learned about anxiety is that it will pass. There are times when I fixate on the anxiety, believing that it means that there is something wrong with me or my life, believing that it means that I will be miserable forever or prevented from living the life I want to live. There are times I try to push it away, times I try to hide from it, believing that the only way I can be happy, the only way I can be okay, is by pretending it isn’t there. But all these things only feed it, only teach me that I need to be afraid.

My name is Marissa Valeriano and I am a therapist from Hoboken, NJ. I have wrestled with the idea of writing this blog for a long time now. Journaling has been a life changing tool in my own wellness journey and one that I have seen help my clients in a thousand ways over the years. When we write we are able to create space between ourselves and the swirling thoughts in our heads, we are better able to clarify our kaleidoscope of emotions into something that feels true.