Our emotions arise as reactions to events, situations, memories and interactions with others. It's said we have over 50 emotions that help us express how we feel; they influence our mood and can help us make healthy decisions. It's like our bodies way of giving us information and guidance. That is only if we stop, listen and take notice. In this blog I look at the alternative ways we supress our emotions and how we can learn to connect with them.

Last week my blog focused on anger which is suppressed or denied. But for some people anger has become so much part of who they are that they carry it around as a heavy load, to discard this load would be to lose part of themselves. So, in this blog I focus on my insights into why for some anger has become so embedded, why we can't just let go of it and how to find a way forward.

This is my first of two blogs on Anger where I focus on those who try and avoid their anger, who feel it is shameful and overwhelming. I explore how our past experiences can cause us to suppress or deny our anger and how we struggle to control the 'leakages' of anger that escape when we are provoked. By looking at anger in new ways I explore how we can use anger as our guide to protect us and help us make healthier choices.

In this, my third blog on shame I look at the difference ways we experience our shame and how we can feed it. I explore how we can reduce the impact of our shame, and even though it may still lurk waiting to be triggered, we can ensure it no longer has any power us and doesn’t prevent us from being all we can be.

In this second blog on shame, I explore different ways people cope with their shame. Our response can be so embedded and habitual that we are not aware of our shame. In contrast shame can be so present in our lives it can feel like a constant unwanted companion which never leaves us. I look at some of the different ways we cope with shame and how it can affect our relationship with ourselves and with others.

Shame is something that many of us face on a day-to-day basis, yet we don't talk about it. In this initial blog on shame, I cover an overview of shame, and how we can identify it. I see that taking the energy out of our shame as an essential part of the journey of self-acceptance and being the person, we want to be and can be.

This blog focuses on our playful side. The creative, imaginative, spontaneous, living in the moment which tells us we are alive. The time where just for a short time we forget living for an end purpose, or zoning out to escape but instead awaken the child like playfulness which is so often suppressed.