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COURSE

Making Peace With Painful Emotions

With Dr Candice Creasman Mowrey

Being a person is hard. Most of us don’t get much direction on how to show up to the losses, fears, and frustrations that are a natural part of life. In this 10 day-course, you’ll learn the function of emotion, dismantle the messaging about emotions that may be keeping you stuck, and learn mindfulness-based strategies for surviving and thriving as a feeling person. You'll learn how emotions are programmed by our personal experiences, our cultural narratives, and our biology. Using Buddhist foundations of mindfulness, loving-kindness, and awareness practices, you'll learn how to tune in to the important messages our emotions are sending while staying grounded in the present moment. You'll learn how to be still with emotions such as fear, anger, and sadness, reclaiming your power and self-direction. Making peace with pain is warrior work, and the sort of intrapersonal activism we need to be of service to the world and at home with ourselves.

Learn to live with painful emotions and show up with more loving-kindness for yourself and the world.

10 Days

6.3k students

4.8 stars

14 min / day

English

About this course

Observe & Describe Practice

Somatic Experiencing

Values-Driven Action Practice

Meet your Teacher

Dr Candice Creasman Mowrey

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Cary

Candice Creasman, PhD is a licensed counselor, author, and meditation teacher. She has provided psychotherapy to individuals with addiction, mood disorders, and survivors of trauma for over a decade and has been practicing meditation for over 15 years. In her private practice, she helps clients break through barriers to wellness using mindfulness and compassion-based strategies. Dr. Creasman also trains new therapists on using meditation for personal and clinical development.

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10 Days

6.3k students

4.8 stars

14 min / day

English

Lesson 1

All The Feels

On Day 1, we’ll explore the psychological background on why we feel feelings and how to make distinctions between our primary emotions. When we understand the origin story of our feelings, we increase our willingness to experience the full spectrum of emotion. We’ll begin to fine-tune our awareness of feelings, which is central to the process of emotional freedom.

Lesson 2

Avoidance Tactics

We avoid bad feelings and crave good feelings. This patterning keeps us stuck in behaviors that often perpetuate our discomfort. On Day 2, we’ll take a closer look at popular strategies we use to avoid experiencing our uncomfortable emotions including substance use, numbing through media, and overworking. Unpacking our avoidance strategies helps us tune in to the feelings we push away most frequently.

Lesson 3

Emotional Myth Busters

If emotions weren’t complicated enough, we also have layers of messaging that impact the way we experience our feelings. On Day 3, we’ll look at the social, cultural, and personal messages we are inundated with that inform how we experience and express emotion. We’ll pay particular attention to narratives based in racism and sexism that inform what we fear and how we experience anger, ultimately limiting our expression of emotion and connection with others.

Lesson 4

Connecting With Emotion

Now that we’ve examined the machinery that runs our current system of emotion, we can start to write some new programming. On Day 4, we’ll use mindfulness strategies to help us connect with emotion. We’ll take a radically different approach to emotion than we are used to - leaning in when we are used to numbing out. As we become more familiar with our emotions, we’ll grow our confidence that feelings can be felt without getting overwhelmed. We’ll also look at common barriers to connecting with emotion.

Lesson 5

Self-Soothing

Now that we know how to recognize and make room for emotion, we can increase our capacity to soothe ourselves effectively. On Day 5, we’ll learn methods for soothing ourselves at low, moderate, and severe levels of emotional discomfort. We’ll use strategies from Dialectical Behavior Therapy and Buddhist practice to decrease negative emotion effectively and without the problematic consequences that come with some of our unskillful coping strategies.

Lesson 6

Cultivating Resilience

We can’t get rid of all discomfort, but we can alter how pain impacts us. Just like maintaining a healthy lifestyle can increase our physical resilience, we can take steps to increase our emotional resilience as well. On Day 6, we’ll cover strategies for self-compassion, accumulating positive experiences, building mastery, and coping ahead to name a few. Each tool is a way to restore our reserves of strength and openness, helping us be less negatively impacted by difficulty when it arises.

Lesson 7

Breaking The Patterns: Ego & Shadow

Emotion is the fuel that keeps us stuck in problematic ways of seeing ourselves and relating to others. On Day 7, we’ll use our increased awareness of emotion to help us gain insight into our ego and shadow identities, which compromise the basic programming of our sense of self. The ego is a pattern of who we think we are, and the shadow is the pattern of what we reject about ourselves. We’ll learn how to acknowledge and integrate these often conflicting parts to gain greater coherence and peace.

Lesson 8

Boundaries

Working with emotions is largely an inside job, but relationships are where we experience some of our biggest feelings. As we grow our capacity to manage emotion skillfully, we also need tools for effective boundary setting. On Day 8, we’ll look at common issues that arise in relationships, and how emotions such as guilt, fear, and resentment can drive our choices to be authentic or avoid boundary setting.

Lesson 9

Beyond Discomfort: Mental Health & Trauma

Some discomfort is beyond our ability to meditate away or lean into. On Day 9, we’ll take a look at some indicators that our discomfort has a basis in trauma or mental illness and explore resources for wellness. We'll challenge the notion that will power and determination alone are enough to feel better, and explore the complex interconnections between individual wellness and community wellness. We'll discuss options for seeking help so you feel empowered to advocate for yourself and get the help you need.

Lesson 10

Values-Based Living

Most of us make our choices around reducing discomfort and increasing comfort. When we do the important work of making room for pleasant and unpleasant feelings, we can shift our decision-making model to be based on our core values. On Day 10, we’ll look at how to get in touch with your core values and how to integrate them into the major spheres of life such as career, relationships, and community engagement.