Even the most well-intentioned energy workers, coaches, and spiritual practitioners can harm their clients if they don’t understand trauma. Here’s a personal story about how an energy worker harmed me.
Psychology Articles
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How do you do shadow work?
Question from a reader: How do we do this shadow work? I’m am aware of plenty of traumas in my past but I struggle to break the habits and patterns I have developed. Are there any tips or advice on where to begin? Journaling? Specific meditations? I’ve read a lot on your site and I really enjoy your ability to cut through the bullshit, while holding to the mysticism. You talk a lot about shadow work, but where do we start?
Spiritual Narcissism
For those in the know, “spiritual ego” is quite rampant in the spiritual community. The more mainstream spirituality has become in the west, the more it has been influenced by individualistic Western cultural values, resulting in what social science has now termed spiritual narcissism.
Coping With Anxiety
Question from a reader:
“I have bad anxiety in my life and I know how to overcome it, it is just hard to do it when I feel down or just everything bad goes on, any tips?”
Disembodied Spirituality: Is it Really Zen or is it Dissociation?
Spirituality and holistic wellness is supposed to be about the mind, body, and spirit, but a lot of toxic, ungrounded spirituality completely ignores the entire body part and only focuses on the mind or the spirit. Here’s how to discern whether or not a spiritual teacher/teaching is disembodied (and thus, not holistic).
What Everyone Needs To Know About Narcissism
I talk about narcissism a lot and in varying ways, and I see it spoken about with a lack of important context online, so I wanted to make sure that everyone understands it all appropriately. Here’s what you need to know.
Why Your Spiritual Practice Should be Trauma-Informed
Not all spirituality is helpful or healthy spirituality. Trauma-informed spirituality is where we need to go in our attempts to leave behind toxic spirituality. Here’s what that is, and how to identify it.
Victim Consciousness isn’t What You Think it is
The concept of victim consciousness gets thrown around by New Agers a lot as this motivation for every single person needing to take 100% personal responsibility for everything that happens to them, but this label gets thrown at the wrong people most of the time and I’m going to tell you why.
Narcissistic Empaths and the Narcissist / Empath Relationship
You’ll find a lot of wildly popular information on the internet talking about the relationship between narcissists and empaths, and how these two polar opposites ends up attracting each other. Surprise! They don’t. Here’s why.
The Fine Line Between Boundaries and Bypassing
Are you actually setting boundaries? Or are you using spiritual concepts to avoid accountability and having to face your own cognitive dissonance? Let’s discuss.
On Cancelling Cancel Culture
Digging into cancel culture, racism, sexism, bias, and bigotry today. Oh my! As well as what these all have to do with spirituality.
Spirituality’s Relationship With Mental Illness
Spirituality and mental illness have a complex relationship. My goal today is to talk about mental illness within the spiritual community in a way that can help those of you reading this recognize just how pervasive it is in the spiritual community and help you identify spiritual people–psychics, channels, influencers, whomever–suffering from mental illness, all the while without stigmatizing it.
The Shadow Self and Shadow Work’s Role In Spirituality
I talk about shadow work all the time on social media. I’ve had a few people ask me questions about what the shadow is, what shadow work involves, and express an interest in learning more, so I’ve revamped an old post to provide a better explanation, as well as make a connection between spirituality and psychology that I think is often overlooked or misunderstood in the spiritual community.
Are You A Critical Thinker?
I posted a poll in my Facebook group a couple of weeks ago asking which topics people would be most interested in having me write about, and critical thinking within the context of spirituality came out on top by far. I think it’s an especially important topic in this day and age when there’s so much misinformation swirling about on the internet. Consider this your crash course in the foundations of critical thinking.
The Divine Feminist
All of the world’s problems (and yours) come down to this.
I Challenge You
Want to know what kind of energy you’re embodying right now? Answer these questions to find out.
A Bystander’s Guide to Suicide
Advice from a reluctant pro on being someone else’s lifeline.
Aligning With Your True Self
I’ve always been fascinated with how accurately (or inaccurately) people perceive me and whether or not I present myself as I actually am. Today I’ve got a little exercise for you to help me find out.
How to NOT Sexually Harass a Woman and Mind Your Own Fucking Business
Surprise! You get a Saturday post because Ash is fired the fuck up. Get ready for an earful of F bombs and a whole lot of “Fuck off!”
Why Do We Need Boundaries?
If we’re all one, how can we have boundaries? And why should we?
13 Reasons Why
Today I’m talking about suicide, sexual assault, domestic violence and all the feels.
The Dark Side of Positivity
There’s a dangerous kind of thinking perpetuating the New Age community from all sides. Bullshit New Age content farms are hocking over simplified clickbait social media content on a daily basis leading people into an ideology that keeps them locked in a low-level conscious state. Here’s how to spot it.
The Fundamental Energy Behind Manifestation
Law of Attraction is often confused with the concept of Karma, or people take it at a very literal, surface level and believe that their thoughts, quite literally, manifest around them. Ha! If only it were that simple! In today’s blog post, I’ll try to explain how we create complex belief structures around the fundamental beliefs that live in our subconscious mind and how those things are the mechanism from which Law of Attraction is set in motion.
What’s in a Self? Soul, Personality & Ego
“I am a bit confused about personality and soul. I understand about being in alignment and think I can feel when I am in it. However I am not sure if this is because I am in alignment with my personality or soul. If I live not in balance with my personality, I am soon aware that I don’t feel in alignment, but I thought that our personalities are just cloaks for our souls? Rarely do I feel urge to do something which I wouldn’t ordinarily do and wondered if this is soul overriding personality?”
Universal Archetypes: The Connection Between Tarot, Numerology, Dream Interpretation, Palmistry and Astrology
Did you know that numerology, astrology, dream interpretation, tarot and palmistry are all connected? A lot of times when you learn about these things independently, you may miss the ways they all intersect. Learn more about archetypes in today’s blog post.
When “Let It Go” Doesn’t Cut It
When you want to throat punch the next person who tells you to “Let it go.”
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