Making Peace With Painful Emotions - by Dr Candice Creasman Mowrey

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.

StressStress & AnxietyVisualizationSelf-CompassionMindfulnessBuddhismMindfulness MeditationHappinessHealth & HappinessSecularRecovery & HealingHealingSecular MindfulnessGroundedOpen Awareness

Meet your Teacher

Dr Candice Creasman Mowrey
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.

read more

10 Days

6.3k students

4.8 stars

14 min / day

Stress

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.

read more

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.

read more

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.

read more

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.

read more

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.

read more

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.

read more

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.

read more

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.

read more

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.

read more

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.

read more

4.8 (220)

Recent Reviews

Shari

December 23, 2025

Excellent class!

Lori

November 26, 2025

This was an amazing course chock full of rich information & valuable tools. I definitely recommend this course to everyone! Thank you for the time, research, & energy used to create this course as I benefitted tremendously. Namaste. 🙏🏻

axelle

November 20, 2025

Very good! Clear and helpful

Alicia

March 27, 2025

Very, very helpful, supportive, informative, and educational

Josefina

January 16, 2025

Well structure , beautiful, deep and healing

Grace

November 19, 2024

Excellent course. Information really helped me adjust my relationship with my emotions as part of trauma recovery. I didn’t love the last two lessons, but that’s because of my own relationship with those topics.

STEPHANIE

November 5, 2023

Thank you! This is an awesome course. As I am very advanced in caring myself, it was a very good refresher adding some tools to what I already do. I particularly liked the conclusion as my mantra was : love guides each of my path. During the conclusion, I added my other core values to my main mantra 😊

E

November 2, 2023

This is useful as a part of my continuous learning journey of re-parenting, self-love and emotional regulation.

Sonia

October 20, 2023

Wonderful wisdom, so succinctly expressed! Thank you for this valuable course that incorporated so many helpful principles. And thank you for your willingness to be vulnerable with us. I will listen again to this course in the future!

Thais

September 29, 2023

Great course, if finished perfectly: live by how you want to be rather than how you want to feel. I’ve always believed in being uncomfortable (I’m a gym junky and have taken many extra hours on educational topics out of my practice field just to feel uncomfortable). What got me this time is the impact that my choice caused on my loved ones, this was hard for me to take. Too hard, I couldn’t bear it. Although I had all the best intentions with the choice I thought was life-changing, I made my loved ones bleed emotionally. I couldn’t forgive myself. That’s when I had to learn how to live with my painful emotions. Still not healed yet, I’m a work in progress.

Chuck

September 20, 2023

Excellent presentation of very useful concepts and tools.

Julia

June 10, 2023

This class was outstanding! It is packed with valuable insights into emotions and behavior. I took so many notes and will definitely go through the class a few more times.

Fahad

June 7, 2023

Very useful

Modi

May 19, 2023

It was pleasant. It took me a while to finish and maybe that’s why I couldn’t get the full potential of the course.

Jennifer

April 26, 2023

This has been my favorite course so far.

Jules

April 5, 2023

Lots of very useful info. I plan to listen to this multiple times. Thank you!

Heidi

March 15, 2023

Incredible wisdom. I got so much value out of listening to this I want to do listen again and write notes- such rich insights. Thank you!

DebbieCarley

March 9, 2023

Excellent. This will become a resource for me to jump into next level research and applications to meet my needs.

Heidi

February 13, 2023

Much content packed in a short time. This could be spread over a 20 day course. I have to go over it again. Thank you.

Lori

January 22, 2023

Excellent course. I learned so much. Highly recommend.

More from Dr Candice Creasman Mowrey

COURSE

4.7

• 10 DAYS

Healing Your Inner Critic

by Dr Candice Creasman Mowrey

COURSE

4.8

• 7 DAYS

Wild Woman’s Guide To Mindful Living

by Dr Candice Creasman Mowrey

10 min

4.7

• GUIDED

Healing The Source Of The Inner Critic: The Wounded Child

Dr Candice Creasman Mowrey

10 min

4.6

• GUIDED

Gratitude Practice For Discomfort And Difficulty

Dr Candice Creasman Mowrey

8 min

4.6

• GUIDED

Acceptance and Forgiveness

Dr Candice Creasman Mowrey

13 min

4.6

• GUIDED

Let Go with Love

Dr Candice Creasman Mowrey

6 min

4.3

• GUIDED

Listening To Anxiety

Dr Candice Creasman Mowrey

5 min

4.6

• GUIDED

Dealing With Distraction

Dr Candice Creasman Mowrey

2 min

4

• GUIDED

Listening to Anxiety

Dr Candice Creasman Mowrey

2 min

4.4

• GUIDED

Turn Stress to Compassion

Dr Candice Creasman Mowrey

5 min

4.6

• GUIDED

Healing Your Inner Critic In Relationships

Dr Candice Creasman Mowrey

8 min

4.6

• GUIDED

COVID Coping: Making Room For It All

Dr Candice Creasman Mowrey

Trusted by 35 million people. It's free.

Insight Timer

Get the app