Blog - Dr. Joan Rosenberg

Identifying Distractions Pt. 3

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

This is the third of three weeks of questions to stimulate your thought and awareness about ways in which you may be distracting yourself from greater self-understanding and knowing. 1. Do you have feelings about having feelings? Do you start to feel sad and then get angry that you are sad? Or do you feel…

Identifying Distractions Pt. 2

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Just as a reminder, over these next few weeks I will be inviting you to become more aware of and identify when you are choosing distractions rather than leaning into difficult thoughts or feelings. Write each question down on your piece of paper, then after careful thought, write down your answer! 1. Do you rely…

Identifying Distractions Pt. 1

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

The pace of summer is sometimes more laid back and a little slower. An easier pace often lends itself to great opportunities for reflection. In light of this opportunity to reflect, grab your journal and keep it handy over the next couple of weeks as we take another look at things that keep us from…

How can you start relying on yourself, while feeling capable, confident, and resilient?

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

How can you start relying on yourself, while feeling capable, confident, and resilient? The first step is through awareness. As soon as you increase your awareness and acceptance of the full range of your feelings – pleasant and unpleasant – your experience of yourself and your sense of being capable in the world starts to…

Think About Your Experiences Instead Of Thinking Them Away

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Hello, My focus today is to help you think about your experiences instead of thinking them away, or acting like they don’t exist. It may seem counterintuitive that allowing yourself to think about difficult life experiences and feel unpleasant feelings will make you emotionally stronger. You may prefer to believe that if you don’t think…

Mental Health Awareness

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Hello, With this month being Mental Health Awareness Month, I will be highlighting common emotional/psychological challenges and offering a different perspective for you to consider so you can see that challenge in a different light. One really common challenge is that of speaking up and feeling accepted by others. Do you fear being judged or…

Developing A Resilient Mindset

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Hello, The spring season is considered one of new growth, and as we move into this season, I’d like to apply that idea to the growth of a resilient mindset. Developing a resilient mindset can help you live a life of your design. The challenge is that many live lives of default rather than design.…

The Unexpected Riches Of Grief

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Hello, My final post on covering grief is what I call “the unexpected riches of grief”. This might be a challenging idea to grasp – that the grief that you may feel holds value and depth – yet it can have a positive impact in your life. First, understand that moving through grief means making…

How To Understand The Impact Of Your Life Experiences

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Hello, This is the second to last in this series on how to make sense of your difficult life experiences, grief, and disguised grief. As we continue to explore all aspects of grief, I want to speak on the importance of “inquiring more deeply”, or better put, understanding the impact of your experiences across time.…

Helping You Make Sense of Unresolved Grief

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Hello, Today’s post is the 4th in this series covering aspects of grief and disguised grief. This process takes time, space and the willingness to change and look at life with a different lens, so be gentle yourself as you consider the ideas below. To help guide others through their experiences of grief, I developed…

Disguised Grief

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Hello, Last week’s blog talked about loss and losses. In this week’s blog, I will deepen our conversation by describing what I call “Disguised Grief”. As I wrote last week, most people associate grief, which I typically describe as sadness, helplessness, anger, or disappointment, with more immediate or present-day losses like relationship losses or the…

Have You Been Experiencing Loss?

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being, TedX

Hello, As we started this week, I was left thinking about where we were this time last year and the unexpected events that occurred over the past 12 months. These thoughts prompted me to talk about loss and grief – experiences with which we can all relate. Let’s start with loss since most people associate…

Do You Experience Fear of Failure and Fear of Taking Risk?

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being, TedX

Hello, If asked to define failure, loss, or unexpected and un-welcomed change, how would you do so? And by defining what it means to you, and how it has impacted your life, what would you say is your relationship with failure? What stops people in their tracks from initiating and pursuing goals, is often what…

Why Asking For Help Is Not A Burden For Others

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being, TedX

Hello, In last weeks blog post, I highlighted a number of guidelines that can help you gauge a healthy relationship. These guidelines are meaningful whether they are applied to an intimate relationship or friendships. One of the patterns I have observed over and over regardless of relationship, is the reluctance to ask for help. Many…

Have You Ever Wondered What Makes A Healthy Relationship?

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being, TedX

Hello, In honor of February being a heart focused month and in response to the upcoming Valentines Day, here are some ideas to consider about what makes a healthy relationship. Sometimes it’s hard to tell whether a particular relationship – whether a platonic friendship or an intimate relationship – is good for you or worthy…

Truth Matters and Words Matter

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Hello, There are many times I have been moved to write in response to particular events or situations and have been quite considered in my remarks. In light of the current instability we are facing, let me offer a few thoughts to help you think about and navigate our current choppy waters. As you read…

New Start List 2021

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Hello,Welcome to 2021!We can now embrace this wonderful and exciting new year – one with endless opportunities, possibilities for achieving goals and dreams, and a year that in all ways, can be made better than the last.I’ve been reflecting on some key ideas that can be helpful for moving your life forward. As we enter…

Who Do You Want To Be

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Hello,WHEW! Geez, what a rollercoaster ride this year has been. I know I have talked at length about the countless challenges we have faced over the past nine months.I hope that this year has evolved for you into one of reflection, resilience and reconnection. Sheltering in place and quiet with fewer distractions can invite reflection. What…

Gratitude Journey 2020

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Hello! I hope that you have been able to participate in a December of Gratitude, or what I am affectionately calling “Grati-December”. I invited you into 31 days of gratitude and I have used this time as one of reflection and understanding. I hope you have also been taking the time each day to practice…

December of Gratitude

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

For those of you celebrating, I hope you were able to enjoy the American Thanksgiving holiday in a way that felt safe, comfortable and satisfying – even if it didn’t resemble past holidays. Without question, this year has been challenging in quite an unrelenting way. No doubt, it has tested us in ways we never…

Turning Up The Volume On Your Thoughts

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

What steps can you take, so that you can speak your truth, and be heard? Through all my years of clinical practice, I’ve found that speaking your truth is singularly the most important action you can take to cultivate confidence, authenticity, and resilience. The changes are profound – better brain health, confidence, deeper relationships,…

Re-learning How You Speak With Others, So That You Can Better Speak Your Mind

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

“Having the ability to express yourself with ease is, without question, one of the most significant factors in developing emotional strength, unwavering confidence, living authentically, and an overall sense of well-being.” I know we are continuing to live in the midst of much uncertainty. Given where we are at this time, my strongest recommendation…

How To Start Engaging In Self-Compassionate Conversation

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

How can you stop harsh self-criticism in its tracks, and instead, engage in self-compassionate conversation? I hope you’ve had a chance to review my blog posts over the past few weeks. I’ve been addressing harsh self-criticism and negative self-talk . . . a habit and practice I am committed to help people stop. As I…

How To End Harsh Self Criticism: Part 3

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

I hope you have been gaining benefit from my deeper discussion of harsh self-criticism and negative self talk. I can speak for hours on this topic and would highlight in bright neon lights and blaring sounds how absolutely crucial it is for you to stop engaging in such mean treatment of your self. Experiencing unpleasant…

How To End Harsh Self Criticism: Part 2

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

What steps are you taking to end how you negatively talk to yourself? In my last blog post, I talked about the importance of ending harsh self criticism, and the idea that even though you cannot control that you feel or how you feel, you do have some measure of control over how you think.…

How To End Harsh Self Criticism: Part 1

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

How can you learn to end harsh self criticism, and why that is important for emotional growth? As we start to round out the last quarter of the year, I want to start talking about the notion of emotional control, and the perception that goes along with it. Before we start, I want to impart…

Defining Vulnerability

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

How do you define vulnerability? Earlier, on social media I shared a wonderful video by noted research professor, Dr. Brene Brown, where she talked about the “Power Of Vulnerability”. In this video, she touched on the lessons and strengths that vulnerability gives us. In previous emails, I have discussed what I have learned about vulnerability.…

How to Create a Confident, Resilient, and Authentic Life of Your Design.

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

How to Create a Confident, Resilient, and Authentic Life of Your Design. These past few months, I have been humbled and blessed by those who have been touched by my work, people like you, who are reading and learning from the methods that I have created over the past 30 years. Some of you reading…

Bad Emotional Math Part 2

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Solving the equation for Bad Emotional Math, can start today, all you need to do is take that first step. Surprisingly, equations are an essential part of everyday life. They help us find things on Google, and help us find directions when we drive. There are a hidden set of equations that can increase your…

Bad Emotional Math

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

What is bad emotional math, and how does it apply to you? If I were to ask you whether you tended to think more negative thoughts or positive thoughts, what would your answer be? Your manner of thinking really makes a difference in how you feel and the two are uniquely intertwined. Positive emotions can…

Learning To Build Confidence Through Challenges

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Change is the only constant in life. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus, said, “Change is the only constant in life.” I guess I wasn’t the first one to say it, yet this mindset is still relevant today. We know that life is putting us through the paces and offering what seems to be daily challenges. Today,…

Is There Anything Positive About Sadness?

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Are you feeling sad? The clients I’m working with are mostly talking about feeling sad. Sadness has its own challenges because it often brings up sad memories from the past. And often the sadness from our past gets mixed in with sadness we feel in the present. Sometimes in an effort to not feel sad,…

Let’s Talk About Change

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Let’s talk about change. During the past four months, it seems we have been experiencing ever evolving challenges as this time has progressed. As with the start of anything new – in this case the month of July – I want to encourage you to take a few moments to reflect on the experiences and…

Emotional Resilience Part 2

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

A part two to my emotional resilience series where I ask: How can you take previous life challenges, and use them to help you become emotionally resilient. As we close up this last week of June, I want to continue our discussion of emotional resilience, and how you can take these teachings as “tools of…

Emotional Resilience

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

During trying times, how can you work on and build emotional resilience? What an interesting and unexpected first six months of 2020. Clearly, this has been a year of disruption, and one that is demanding much of us. As you continue to navigate this year, you may have a wide variety of emotional reactions to…

Creating A More Meaningful Life

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

During challenging times, how can you create a more meaningful life for yourself? Thank you for continuing to reach out to me, reading my blog, and for participating in the conversations about emotional growth and well-being. I am humbled by the opportunity to help guide you in a direction that helps you live a life…

Change Is The Constant

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Your greatest sense of stability and security is achieved when you feel resourceful within. First, I would like to thank those of you who reached out in the past week to connect with me and let me know how they you’ve been doing these past several weeks. It brings me peace knowing that while we…

How Are You?

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

I have been thinking a lot about you, whether you’re an active reader of my weekly emails, or perhaps the casual blog reader of content on my website. I try and provide you with a sense of direction, a sense of peace, and hopefully give you a jump start in the middle of your weekly…

Working Towards Change And Self-Reflection

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

How can you use this time to take stock in yourself, self-reflect, and work on the changes you’ve always wanted to work on? It may feel like our world has been separated into two parts: pre-COVID19 and now. And as I have been reflecting on what things were and what could be, I wanted to…

Understanding feelings of helplessness while cooped up at home.

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Understanding feelings of helplessness while cooped up at home. I’m wondering if you’re like me and more ready for a transition back outside the home, and into a community and city you recognize. While staying inside is the healthy, safe, and smart practice to follow, I can empathize and understand that the stresses of being…

Creating A Routine To Create A Sense Of Calm

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

How can you “Calendarize” your day, to better bring about a sense of calm? I hope I am finding you healthy right now, and I want you to know that I have been keeping you in my thoughts that you remain safe during these uncertain times. As you’ve been following I’ve been focused on providing…

Staying Resilient: Consider Completing and Creating

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

I hope this blog post continues to find you safe and well. As many of us stay the course on “sheltering-in-place”, similar to last week, my intent is to keep sharing thoughts to consider and tips that can help keep you feeling more centered and balanced. As I am now well into my 3rd week…

How to Be More Resilient Dealing with Our ‘Not-so-normal’ New Normal

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

I just want to use this blog post to talk more directly about reactions you may be having to this unprecedented life experience dealing with consequences of the COVID-19 virus and to offer my perspective . . . in other words, thoughts to consider and tips that can help keep you feeling more centered and…

Book Series 48: How Using Your Name Can Help Ease Anxiety

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

This week we are going to be answering the question I posed in my last blog post: How do you talk to yourself? Are you gentle and kind? Or are you harsh and blunt? What you say to yourself really does matter. When you talk to yourself (and most people do), and you’ve done something…

Book Series 47: How Do You Talk To Yourself?

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Welcome to March! As we head in to this new month, I’m checking in: How are you doing? What choices are you making to improve your life? What do you notice about your own progress? I know at times I cover some sensitive topics that may elicit unpleasant feelings, but I’m proud of you for…

Book Series 46: Self-Affirmations Making A Difference In Easing Anxiety

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Self Affirmation is a tested way of helping you build emotional and mental toughness, while helping ease anxiety. Have you ever considered that self-affirmations could actually make a difference in easing anxiety, given the tremendous amount of confusion and controversy about them? Affirmations are the positive self-statements (e.g., “I am beautiful,” “I am well liked…

Book Series 45: Anxiety Is Doubting Your Emotional Strength

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

How do I stop doubting myself, and work on my inner emotional strength? How does resourcefulness effect your ability to handle anxiety? And when you do experience moments of anxiety, how can you help yourself to feel capable in those moments, and how can you build emotional strength? These are the questions I would like…

Book Series 44: Techniques That Change How You Talk About Anxiety

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

How can I prepare myself to better handle my anxiety? If you were able to read my last blog post, we went over the Rosenberg Anxiety Reset™, and before we jump in to this next week, I want you to take a moment and go over how using this technique helped you. If you weren’t…

Book Series 43: Rosenberg Anxiety Reset™

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

How do you accurately identify, feel, and express your thoughts and feelings? As we close out the first month of this new year and new decade, it is a nice opportunity to just check in and see if anything has changed with how you are thinking and processing feelings. Speaking of feelings… If true feelings…

Book Series 42: How Your Anxiety Is An Unexpressed Feeling Of Vulnerability

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

How many times have you felt anxious when you were really feeling vulnerable instead? Anxiety acts as a cover, much like an umbrella. This umbrella is covering your experience of the eight unpleasant feelings. Once you are aware of and in touch with the real feelings, the anxiety diminishes greatly. Then it is a matter…

Book Series 41: Diminishing Anxiety: Strategies That Help

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Words you use can make a big difference in how you feel, and this is especially true for emotions like fear and anxiety. Language is really important to me, and my interest in words likely stems back to playful exchanges with my father throughout childhood and adolescence. He was quick with words, and the two…

Book Series 40: How To Start Releasing Anxiety And Worry

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

What if you could get a handle on the worry and anxiety you experience? Welcome to the first weekly reading series of the new year! I hope you have been able to find guidance in the previous year from these weekly blog posts, and my hope is that you continue to find that guidance as…

Book Series 39: 5 Exercises To Overcome Your Emotional Distractions Part 3

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Having feelings about having feelings acts as a distracter from your initial reaction and most authentic feeling experience. As we start to wind down our talk about distractions over the next couple weeks, please head over to my Facebook page or blog and let me know how the exercises are helping you! Quick reminder: Over…

Eliminating Distraction Exercises Part 2

Book Series 38: 5 Exercises To Overcome Your Emotional Distractions Part 2

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

My goal is to help you clear away the distractions from accessing and experiencing the full range of your feelings so that the decade beginning with 2020 helps you lead a more fully alive and more fully expressed life. Over the next couple of weeks, I will be challenging you to become aware and identify…

Book Series 37: 5 Exercises To Overcome Your Emotional Distractions

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

My goal is to help you clear away the distractions from accessing and experiencing the full range of your feelings so that the decade beginning with 2020 helps you lead a more fully alive and more fully expressed life. Before we get down to the nitty gritty this week, I’d like you to find grab…

Book Series 36: Disconnection and Distractions

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Have you developed habitual patterns that keep you disconnected from relating to emotional experiences? Lets start this weeks blog series with an important and relatable example: Leah and Cotter, a professional couple in their early 40s, both work in white collar professions. They have been married for just over 12 years, and they have two…

Book Series 35: Are You A Control Freak?

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

You can really think of the effort to control as an effort at preventing or stopping feelings all together. How many people have you heard describe themselves as “control freaks”? Or say that they hate “losing control”? Perhaps you feel this way, too. The word “control” implies that something is being imposed from the outside…

Book Series 34: Identifying and Overcoming Distractions

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

When you make the choice to disconnect or distract from your feelings, you opt for the fleeting relief that comes from distancing yourself from an uncomfortable situation or experience. The ways you keep yourself from being well attuned and connected to yourself – in essence, how you sabotage or undermine your emotional strength – is…

Book Series 33: Why Accurately Labeling Feelings Leads To Self Love

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

You can’t feel capable, nor confident, until you have a sense that you can handle the feelings associated with things not working out the way you wanted. As we approach the end of October, I hope you have been able to experience inner peace and self understanding from my weekly reading series. But before we…

Book Series 32: Why Labeling Feelings Is Important

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

When we put feelings into words, we actually change the brain’s response to the emotions themselves. Last week, we talked about the window of tolerance. Today it’s all about the importance of labeling your feelings, so that you can better understand them, and you can feel more skillful whenever you encounter them. Naming or labeling…

Book Series 31: Emotional Tolerance and How Do You Experience Feelings?

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

The window of tolerance concept helps us understand why there are so many individual differences in how we experience feelings. I hope you’ve had a wonderful week, and I’m glad that you are back as we continue this conversation about emotional tolerance, and explore the differences in how we experience our feelings. The window of…

Book Series 30: Do You Know The Scary Movie Factor?

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

How do ‘scary movies’ effect our tolerance for emotional body sensations? Today we are moving on to what I call the “Scary Movie Factor”. Here’s the gist of it. Think about whether you like or dislike going to scary movies. People who enjoy scary movies often say they enjoy them in part because of the…

Ever wonder what to do with your feelings when you feel them

Book Series 29: What to do with your feelings when you feel them

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

What to “do” with your feelings when you feel them. Give yourself some credit! You just walked with me through learning about the 8 difficult feelings and I think staying the course on this journey merits a hardy congratulations! As the Aussies would say, “Good on ya!” Now that you have a better idea about…

Book Series 28: The Connection Between Vulnerability and Emotional Weakness Part 3

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

There is a connection that vulnerability has to both emotional strength and weakness. If you haven’t had the opportunity to read Part 1 Blog Post and Part 2 Blog Post of this series, I would invite you to do so. Vulnerability is such an important yet challenging emotion, and I can only hope that what…

Book Series 27: Conscious Vulnerability Part 2

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Do you make the conscience decision to be vulnerable? Conscious vulnerability is a vulnerability we choose to lean into. When we get serious about taking a personal, professional, or social risk, we open ourselves up to being hurt (laughed at, ridiculed, teased, or embarrassed). Think about public speaking, engaging in athletic competition, acting, singing, playing…

Book Series 26: How to Deepen Your Understanding of Vulnerability Part 1

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Is there a dual nature to vulnerability? Our next topic is one that I am excited and deeply passionate about, and because there is so much to vulnerability, I am going to break it down in to a three part discussion over the coming weeks, so that we can truly have the time to go…

Book Series 25: How do we learn to tolerate frustration?

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

When you are frustrated, do you react with a fight reaction or flight reaction? Physiologically, frustration is associated with high levels of arousal or activation of the acute stress response or the fight-or-flight system. The fight-or-flight reflex enables us to respond quickly to perceived life-threatening situations by either fighting off the threat or fleeing to…

Book Series 24: When You Feel Disappointed, Here Are A Few Distinctions to Consider

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Disappointment is experienced when we are faced with unmet needs, desires, and expectations. What does disappointment highlight? How do you handle disappointment? We hope, expect, or anticipate something positive yet we are met with an unwanted and unfavorable outcome. Disappointment highlights our helplessness and lack of control over certain situations. Disappointment is often contrasted with…

Book Series 23: Embarrassment: How we all wish we would have done that one thing differently

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

HOW TO GROW AS A PERSON AFTER SUFFERING EMBARRASSMENT This week we get to talk about embarrassment. Trust me, we’ve all had moments of extreme embarrassment, myself included! But as uncomfortable as it is, it’s an important feeling that helps you grow as a person. Embarrassment is an acknowledgment to ourselves and to others that…

Book Series 22: What Are The Two Primary Functions of Anger?

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

How is anger a protective response? Welcome back! I hope you found some answers in last weeks topic of “Feeling Helpless”, and I’m glad that you are continuing with our discussions on the Eight Unpleasant Feelings. This week, we are going to talk about anger.Anger is a protective response. You need to have it available…

Book Series 21: How Does Feeling Helpless Motivate Change?

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

How can feeling helpless motivate change? Helplessness is frequently tied to feeling small, powerless, and vulnerable and is often occurs when you are unable to have an impact or influence on an individual, event, or situation. It might leave you with a sense of being on edge or waiting for whatever is coming, which may…

Book Series 20: The Difference Between General Shame and Core Shame

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Did you know there are 2 types of shame? Just wanted to give you the heads up, this weeks topic is a bit heavy. However, you may learn something you didn’t know and hopefully it will be helpful to you.Let’s talk about shame. There is a parallel distinction between general shame, which serves a social…

Book Series 19: Sadness. How It Serves You

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Have you ever considered how sadness can serve you? Seems like an odd thing to say or contemplate. Sadness can be especially painful because it often brings up sad memories from the past, which can feel overwhelming. We associate it with situations caused by circumstances or people over whom we believe we have little impact…

Book Series 18: What Are Feelings For Anyway?

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Feelings are for a threefold purpose: protection, connection, and creativity. When you feel safe and secure, both alone and with others, your mental, emotional, and physical resources are not required for protection or basic survival needs. At this point, your feelings are available for connection and creativity, often in the form of relationships, risk-taking, and…

How Parents Effect How We Handle Feelings

Book Series 17: How Parents Influence How We Handle Feelings

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

How Our Parents Effect How We Handle Feelings Did you know that challenges in facing difficult feelings generally start in childhood. (To a lesser degree, they can begin with very painful events experienced in adulthood.) There is an extensive body of research on how infants and children bond with parents or caretakers that describes the…

Book Series 16: Lingering Feelings

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

LET’S TALK ABOUT LINGERING FEELINGS I hope you are enjoying my weekly emails, covering ‘90 Seconds To A Life You Love‘. If you’ve finished the book, these weekly reminders can be really helpful! For those of you who have not purchased the book yet, remember the weekly ‘chats’ so to speak are only a small…

Book Series 15: Riding The Wave

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Experience The Wave At the end of last week’s discussion, I suggested that the next time your feelings emerge, pay attention. Take a moment, breathe, and really notice what is taking place inside of you on a physiological level. Experience the wave. Let’s talk about ‘the wave’. Neuroscientist and author Jill Bolte-Taylor describes when an…

How to move through and experience emotions

Book Series 14: How To Experience and Move Through Your Emotions

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

We all love ‘how to’ lists. It feeds our go to need to get things done quick. Working through our emotions to create a better life is a life long ‘How To’. However, knowing that each one of our emotions can be addressed in one or more ‘90 Second’ waves is not just a ‘thing’…

Book Series 13: How Is Vulnerability Your Greatest Emotional Strength

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Choosing vulnerability means you can tolerate the other seven feelings. That is what it takes. I believe that we are at our greatest emotional strength when we make the choice to be vulnerable. When you know that the most likely unwanted outcome of being vulnerable (assuming that the outcome is not success) is that you…

Book Series 12: Are You An Emotional Flatline?

Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Do You Address Emotions Like Dr. Spock? Because of the intensity and overwhelming nature of unpleasant feelings, many of my clients have expressed a desire to be a bit more like Star Trek’s Dr. Spock, moving through life in a robotic and unfeeling manner. While this can certainly seem appealing when we think of what…

Book Series 11: Do Your Feelings Come Up or Come Down?

Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Heartfelt, Gut Feeling or Gut Instinct … Is it science? Did you know that the terms “heartfelt”, “gut feeling” or your “gut instinct” are grounded in science? Our bodies contain vast amounts of information – far more than most of us realize and the brain and body constantly feed information back and forth from the…

Book Series 10:Your Sixth Sense – Increasing Self-Attunement

Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

The first step of the Rosenberg Reset is intended to help you stay aware of and connected to your experience (“knowing what you know”) as opposed to distracting from and avoiding your experience (“trying not to know what you know”). Knowing what you know necessitates self-awareness and self-attunement, which leads to greater emotional strength and…

Book Series 9: The Rosenberg Reset – One Choice

Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Let’s talk about the ‘ROSENBERG RESET’ and the first of the 3 steps – One Choice. The Rosenberg Reset is a strategy that enables people to more fully lean into those unpleasant emotions. It is one simple formula. You make the decision to allow yourself to fully feel your feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations. It…

Book Series 8: The Rosenberg Reset – Coping with life’s challenges in healthy ways

Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Let’s talk about the ‘ROSENBERG RESET’ and learning to cope with life’s challenges in healthy ways. While working at the UCLA student-counseling center 25 years ago, I drew a diagram that became my blueprint for counseling clients. I can look back now and recognize that this drawing marked the beginning of the Rosenberg Reset. Essentially,…

Book Series 7: Asking for Help & Relying On Others

Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Let’s talk about ‘asking for help and relying on others’ this week. Being resourceful is the second defining element of emotional strength. Particularly important in being resourceful is having the ability to depend on others. It involves being comfortable with your need for both independence and dependence, as well as your feelings associated with both.…

Book Series 6: Feeling Capable – Relying on Yourself

Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Let’s talk about ‘relying on yourself’ this week. You might be thinking ‘I do that every day Dr. Joan!”. Let me be clear … if you are avoiding unpleasant feelings, that is NOT relying on yourself. In my tens of thousands of hours as a therapist and studying how I could help clients deal with…

Book Series 5: Redefining Emotional Strength

Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

In my book ‘90 Seconds To A Life You Love’, I talk about emotional strength meaning ‘feeling capable and being resourceful’. Feeling capable of facing life’s challenges emerges out of your experience of effectively handling the eight unpleasant feelings. Though it may seem obvious, many people maintain a faulty perception regarding emotional strength; they believe…

Book Series 4: How To Achieve Emotional Mastery – Emotional Strength and Weakness

Confidence, Emotional Strength

Over my three and a half decades of counseling, I came to recognize a pattern among many of my clients that involved common-yet-destructive misconceptions about emotional strength and emotional weakness. I found that individuals with the lowest levels of self-confidence generally held tightly to the beliefs or behaviors described below. In my book ‘90 Seconds To A Life You…

Book Series 3: How To Achieve Emotional Mastery – Building the Framework

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Over recent weeks, I’ve been talking about the importance of managing your feelings well. I’m not really one to beat around the bush, so, if you’re good with it, let’s just jump right in. Have you ever heard the term “emotional management disorder”? Think of it as the inability to comfortably manage your everyday emotional reactions…

Book Series 2: The Gift of Unpleasant Feelings

Confidence, Emotional Strength

In my book ‘90 Seconds To A Life You Love’, I start off by talking about the skills that have to be built to reset your ability to absorb and deal with unpleasant feelings.Did you ever think that unpleasant feelings were a gift?Most of us want to avoid unpleasant thoughts and feelings either because they…

Book Series 1: Living a Life by Design

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Now that my book is out, I want to start going through the ways you can live a life you love, actually by design. This book, 90 Seconds to a Life You Love: How to Master Your Difficult Feelings to Cultivate Lasting Confidence, Resilience, and Authenticity, is my life’s work and it’s full of the…

Diving Deeper Into The Rosenberg Reset

Confidence, Emotional Well-Being

Last week, I told you about how there’s two pathways you can choose for dealing with life’s challenges: avoidance and awareness. Yet, most people don’t realize that managing difficult feelings relates to confidence, resilience, and authenticity. Let’s dive deeper into the Rosenberg Reset. 1 choice, 8 feelings, 90 seconds. Step 1 – You make the…

Is Avoidance Sabotaging You?

Emotional Well-Being

I hope your January is off to a wonderful start. I’m gearing up for the launch of my new book, 90 Seconds to a Life You Love: How to Master Your Difficult Feelings to Cultivate Lasting Confidence, Resilience, and Authenticity. You might be wondering about my title. How is it possible to change anything, much…

Need help crushing your 2019 goals?

Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Happy New Year. Have you set goals for 2019? One of my goals this year is to speak more so I can get the key messages in my book out to more people. Yet, in the process of setting goals, we can get anxious about meeting them. My book is chock full of strategies to…

How To Deal With “Comparison-itis”

Confidence, Emotional Well-Being, Name of Site Category

Perhaps you, like many others, use the new year as a time for reflection and planning and for making changes to enhance some aspect of your life. Yet when people consider making changes, they often compare themselves to others, like one reader who recently wrote me. Check out what she said: “By all appearances, I’m…

Sneak Peek: My new book!

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

My new book 90 Seconds to a Life You Love comes out in two months, but I’m doing something now to THANK YOU for all your support: I’m giving away a free eBook to you! Just pre-order the new book via this page, and you’ll get the Release Your Anxiety eBook, plus downloadable transcripts for…

YOUR SEASONAL SURVIVAL GUIDE

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

Do you feel overwhelmed? Is there too much on your plate? Is it tough to find energy this time of year? You’re not alone. Many of us struggle during the holiday season. Not only that, in many parts of the world, as the winter season is fully setting in, bringing cold, snow, less daylight and…

Emotional Mastery: The Gifted Wisdom of Unpleasant Feelings | Dr Joan Rosenberg | TEDxSantaBarbara

Events, TedX, Video

What often blocks people from feeling capable in life and from having greater success with finances, health or relationships is how they handle unpleasant feelings. Psychologist Joan Rosenberg unveils the innovative strategy and surprising keys for experiencing the challenging emotions that lie at the heart of confidence, emotional strength, and resilience. Best-selling author, consultant, media…

How Do You Handle Change? Do You Seek Stability?

Emotional Strength, Emotional Well-Being

5 Ways To Handle Change Let’s talk about your capacity for handling change. There will never be a moment of your life that will repeat and you can never fully re-experience a moment that you have already lived. So life is really about change. Life is about solving the various challenges and problems you are…

What is the Compliment Cure?

Confidence, Emotional Strength, Relationships

The ‘Compliment Cure’ How often do you hear yourself say or perhaps even say to others that you don’t want to ask anyone for help because you don’t want to burden them? Or you don’t want to lean on anybody because you don’t want to be a burden. This concern is probably one of the…

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