The Mental Emotional Health Blog

If your ability to trust has been damaged, you might naturally put up personal walls to protect yourself. These walls are good, and necessary in the short-term.

In order to grow as a person as time goes on, though, you must learn how to be vulnerable in some ways (not all ways). Don’t take down all of your protective walls at the same time, or you might be too vulnerable. Take your time, and carefully lower your guard in specific ways when you feel you are ready.  When you find a healthy balance between protecting yourself and being vulnerable enough to grow, you will find you have developed new inner strength.

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Take care of yourself!

When is the last time you played like a child? There is something about being silly (within reason) and carefree that can serve as a nice distraction from daily burdens. The next time you need to relax or unwind a little, try one of the following “kid” activities:

• Draw a picture of somewhere you want to go, or a wish you have.
• Find a playground and go on the swings, close your eyes as you feel yourself being rocked back and forth as you swing.
• Wish on a star.
• Lay down on the ground and find shapes in the clouds.
• Buy some comfy sleeper pajamas for the winter, the kind with feet in them.
• Sing.
• Read a children’s book.
• Buy some Oreos, stack 3 on top of each other, dunk them in milk and eat them. 

It is simple, but true: If you take yourself too seriously, you are giving up your sense of humor. You don’t need to become a happy, babbling idiot, but you don’t need to deny yourself light-hearted feelings either.

This is the true joy in life: Being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one, being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it what I can. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations. - George Bernard Shaw