Blessing Manifesting - Making self care and self love part of the everyday.

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8 Signs of Narcissistic Abuse

I have a workbook called Self-Care for Breakups: Healing from Toxic, Abusive, and Codependent Relationships that was inspired by my last relationship of narcissistic abuse and codependency. Narcissistic abuse has become a hot button topic in the last few years. It also plays a part in many relationships, especially complicated and emotionally abusive ones. I want to touch on this subject because it’s so important to be able to recognize these signs so that your personal healing isn’t compromised. Narcissism is the excessive need for admiration, disregard for others’ feelings, inability to handle any criticism, and a sense of entitlement. Someone can be narcissistic due to a personality disorder, life circumstances, upbringing, addiction, or personal trauma. And to be honest – after getting out of my toxic relationship, I had a few narcissistic traits myself. My last ex had many narcissistic traits. She struggled with alcohol abuse and at the…

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Anxiety Challenge and an Ultimate Anxiety Guide

Good morning you lovely beings. I’ve been deep into my anxiety work lately. It’s been an anxious period for me the last few months and I’ve really no idea why, so what does that mean? It’s time to go back to the basics and I’ve got a free anxiety challenge for you! Anxiety disorder is a funny thing with many aspects and it effects different people differently. Sometimes I am anxious for no reason, which means I need to focus on reorganizing my life, making sure that I’m making enough time for sleep, relaxation, and self-care. Other times I am anxious about something specific and that requires more mental maneuvering like positive self-talk and reassuring. And don’t forget to check out my anxiety workbook, Breathe. 30 Day Anxiety Challenge This challenge actually appears in my Anxiety Workbook but I’m really proud of it so I wanted to share it here…

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What Are Your Core Needs?

Your core is the essential, most important part of who you are and it’s important that you nourish that part. So often we put ourselves on autopilot in our day-to-day. Sleep. Eat. Work/School. Rinse and repeat. We’re so busy functioning and paying bills and responsibilities that we forget to do those things that nourish our core self. Who are you at your core and what things fuel that part of you? Really take a moment to think about that. Who are you when you are at your most authentic self? Shed those layers, just for a moment, of all of the things that you have to be and just focus on who you are. Priestess. Mystic. Witch. Free Spirit. Adventurer. Traveler. Warrior. Activist. Creator. Artist. Writer. Reader. Dancer. Yogi. Singer. What word would you use to describe yourself? Ask yourself what awakens that part of who you are. What makes…

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How I Met My Wife: Happy Pride Month

June is gay pride month and it’s a time to celebrate those key figures that fought for gay rights throughout history, most notably Marsha P. Johnson in the 1969 Stonewall riots in Manhattan. It’s also a time to raise awareness about issues in the LGBTQIA+ community and for those (when it is safe to do so) to be visible, share our stories, and our voices. If you’ve missed it on the blog, I’m pansexual (meaning I find gender pretty irrelevant to who I am attracted to). I’m also married! Meet my wife Megan! We met in 2018 on a dating site and bonded over our love of the Golden Girls. Is there a better way to start a relationship? I don’t think so! It was meant to be. I had recently ended a very toxic relationship and I anticipated that I would be single for a while. I had to…

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Self-Care For Morning Anxiety

I suffer from morning anxiety. When I’m going through a bad period of anxiety it manifests itself in several ways. Sometimes it’s terrible nightmares, frequent migraines, panic attacks, general anxiety + sense of doom, and sometimes it’s morning anxiety. (For help with anxiety, check out my workbook – Breathe.) Morning anxiety is the worst of them all. Morning anxiety is caused (usually) by the steroid hormone, cortisol which is produced in the adrenal glands. We humans have this thing called the Cortisol Awakening Response. When we wake up, most of us have a sharp 38–75% increase of cortisol for about 30 minutes. Anxiety and stress also create cortisol. So if you’re in a constant state of high stress, you fall asleep stressed out, or you wake up and are anxious about the day – your body starts producing way more cortisol and in response, you freak out. Instead of the…

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The Importance of Asking for Help

Today we have another post from our awesome guest contributor, Sam Bowman! Spirituality and addiction recovery don’t have to go hand-in-hand, but they certainly can. Whether you already consider yourself to be spiritual or you’re grasping for something more that you feel you’ve been missing in your life, tapping into your spirituality, calling on your angels to guide you, and asking for help can be the first crucial steps to recovery from addiction. Asking for what you need is really okay, especially if you find that you’re struggling on your road to recovery. No one said you have to do it alone! When you ask for what you need, it’s a form of self-care, which should be a top priority for you as you work to better communicate your thoughts, feelings, and needs through the recovery process. So how can you use spirituality to help you get through this season…

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Gratitude Journaling Prompts

How often are you grateful? Really grateful? Down to your toes, “Gosh, I’m so darn lucky,” grateful? Hopefully you have those moments at least once a day. Gratitude is the practice of being thankful and appreciating the little (and big!) things in your life. If you’re a member of my Facebook group, the Soulsisterhood, then you’ve probably seen my weekly #ThankfulThursday posts where I ask you to share something you’re grateful for! It’s not always an easy thing to do, being grateful, especially when life gets difficult. It’s hard to muster up appreciation for anything when you’re feeply depressed or you’re dealing with very real world issues. Gratitude isn’t a band-aid we can just slap onto our lives to instantly heal everything, but it is an important tool to help you see the overall picture of your life. I recently released Epic Gratitude on my Patreon Page. It’s a mini-ebook…

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Coping Skills: Challenge Your Thoughts

I’m running a 30-day mental health challenge on Instagram in honor of Mental Health Month and it’s provided a lot of reflection for me in just these last few days. My mental health journey was such a deep and sacred experience for me – spanning years. I learned so much about myself and how brains work and how to encourage mine to work better. One of the more life-changing aspects was learning that I was allowed to challenge my own thoughts. (Read this post from 2011: Change Your Thoughts – I’m Learning How) I’m allowed to question them. I’m allowed to question their veracity. I can ask myself if I should act on them instead of impulsively acting on how they make me feel. It’s such an important coping skill. When I was hardcore struggling with my mental health my feelings controlled how I acted 100% of the time. There…

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7 Self-Care Tips for Overactive Caregivers

Among the 12 Jungian archetypes, the Caregiver is recognized to be the most altruistic. Helping others in a snap, they won’t hesitate to give it their best in order to nourish those around them. As such, they are often perceived to be the kindest among the archetypes. They practically embody this whole notion of being a neighbor towards others. But while all seems to be perfect, the Caregiver is still, after all, human. Limited and imperfect, Caregivers have their own fair share of challenges and problems to deal with. And if they’re not aware of it, they will slowly lose their essence in a way that’s undeserving, especially in this selfless archetype. With that, we’ll be pointing out what these common problems are and 7 self-care tips that they can inculcate in order to better manage all the emotional baggage they’re carrying for others! Common Caregiver Problems: Becoming problem-absorbers –…

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