Buffalo seasons Awareness in life
Peering Outside Your Snow Globe, Mindfully
When triggered by certain experiences or interactions, our snow globe can be "shaken," causing a blizzard of emotions and defenses to swirl around us. This metaphorical blizzard can cloud our vision, distort our perceptions, and make it hard to see beyond our immediate reactions. Real Dialogue requires us to recognize when our snow globe is being shaken and to work through the blizzard of emotions and defenses. It requires a willingness to see beyond our subjective lens, to calm our emotional blizzards, and to engage with others in a way that is open, empathetic, and transformative. Only then can we move from isolated snow globes to shared experiences, where real understanding, mindfulness, curiosity, and connection can flourish.
Why Am I Feeling Prickly? Understanding Defense Mechanisms
Defensive reactions from the unconscious are automatic, often involuntary responses that arise to protect us from perceived threats, discomfort, or emotional pain. These defenses are deeply ingrained in our psyche, typically developing early in life as a way to cope with difficult emotions or situations. Because they operate below the level of conscious awareness, we often don't realize we're engaging in them, even though they can significantly influence our behavior and interactions.
Bridges & Boundaries: Relational Wellbeing
Relationships spread across family (parents, siblings, spouses/partners, children, grandparents, etc.); work (co-workers, bosses, supervisors, contractors, consultants, clients, patients, etc.); friends (school, college, sports, arts, etc.); and community (neighborhoods, spiritual / religious, collectives, groups, volunteerism, etc.).
In our post-modern 21st century world—comprised of social media influencers, online gaming, work-from-home opportunities, live coverage of wars being waged, artificial intelligence, and fallout from the global coronavirus pandemic, to name but a few—humanity’s relational wellness has been threatened.
And the threats are real.
On Earth Day, The Minds of Gray Whales & Our Shadows
Nature is our teacher, every day. We only need listen, smell, taste, touch, and observe. On this 53rd Earth Day, reading our profundity can lead us into a verdant chartreuse and emerald-painted forest, where we can chase our Shadow amidst spring’s dew drops and cadmium yellow rays of sunshine.
Coming to understand the self in connection to our natural world and to others is an enlightening journey into waters and forest floors that we inhabited eons ago. Well before the study epigenetics, Carl Jung posited that a hidden and repressed part of the self, aka The Shadow, “reach[es] back into the realm of our animal ancestors.” [2]