Love Languages: Overcoming Emotional Baggage So You Can Better Receive and Give Love

This is for anyone who has conflicts with someone they care about and wants to figure out ways to get out of those conflicts more productively. It’s about our emotional baggage – specifically the unmet needs from our childhood, and how those block us from being able to recognize and receive a lot of love being given to us by people in our life, currently.  I will focus on the moment we are in pain – and how to step back from it so we can move back into happiness and get more of what we want – which is love and affection.

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BlogSarah May B
Where the Hell is Sarah May?!

Curious about the radio silence on Teaspoon? Well, that's because I got hitched! Yep. Sarah May is officially off the market. Have no fear - Teaspoon is back and some sweet blog action will be heading out to you shortly. xo MRS. Sarah May B.

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BlogSarah May B
How to Break Out of a Relationship with a Narcissist

 

If you prefer to listen, here’s the podcast version of this post.

 

This is for a person who filled out my survey – I don’t know your name, but this is for you! I hope it helps. You asked how to break out of the vicious cycle of a narcissistic relationship. Because it can be extremely terrifying and painful and feel much like a hostage situation. The reason is that if you are in a relationship with a narcissist – you know how ruthless and dark their punishing can be. It also goes deep into your heart strings, puppeting you around like a raw nerve. They are master controllers and know exactly what to do to make you do what they want. And also they are WILLING to do it, at all costs. This is 3 parts: the what, they why, plus a few tools to help you get started...

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BlogSarah May B
We Are the Slashies: 5 ways to Grow as a Working Creative

What is a slashie? A person who knows that their day job isn't their real job: a busboy/actor; waitress/screenwriter/photographer; singer/production designer/legal secretary. Your slash is your professional makeup. In other words, most of us - if we are honest with ourselves.  Because a creative thinker is many things, today if you are a slashie you are forging a new path in a wide open sea of opportunity, but you likely haven’t solved for that single, money-making passion just yet. But that’s a good thing – unlike how it might feel to a slashie – this stage is part of the process. Slashies are a growing percentage of the workforce because careers nowadays don’t have “work experience.” A creator can build a new app/community/business overnight and because of that, new job definitions are being invented every day. Thanks to equal opportunity of the internet, it’s like a claim-jumper era for creatives with a desire to build something new....

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BlogSarah May B
Manufacturing Happiness

Happiness is a thought-habit that for many of us, requires constant maintenance and deliberate focus. Though there are many reasons to feel grateful for our life – they’re all around us all the time - in order to be capable of feeling that value, we need contrast. Contrast meaning the complimentary opposite of gratitude and appreciation: pain or difficult striving.  In other words, a constant state of awareness of value (happiness) often arrives from a true understanding of its absence (pain). Without that contrast, it’s easy for life to get stuck in a middle array of emotions – a permanent state of “so-so” or “okay.”  When you live in this state for long enough, powerful emotions like gratitude and happiness are assigned to a set of general milestones (birthdays, weddings, getting a promotion etc) but outside of that it can be frustrating to find a true sense of joy.  The real kind – that moves you to tears, or sticks in your memory for the rest of your life....

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BlogSarah May B
Episode 46: Going Nowhere: When You’re Stuck in a Relationship That Doesn't Give You What You Want

This is for anyone who is currently romantically involved with someone who is not treating you well and you are taking it, and it hurts. You know it’s not right but you can’t seem to leave it for some reason. This situation betrays your foundational values, and in staying in it, you betray yourself and what’s important to you.

 

What do you want for your future? Because you get to decide what’s important to you. That’s what this episode is about. Are you tolerating and accepting less than what you want from another? Are you giving more and receiving less? Are you operating on less than a trustworthy bond? Are you dating someone who won’t commit to you or maybe they don’t want the same things you want but you’re still hanging around “just because you don’t have anything better at the moment.” Maybe you are in a committed relationship but you want more – you want better – you want this to go to the next stage: moving in, getting married, or just better treatment – but this person is “complicated” and it’s not how they roll. Maybe you break up occasionally but always end up getting back together.  Maybe they decide they need a break and then they come back again as soon as you become too visibly independent....

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BlogSarah May B
Parents just don’t understand: suffering from parents who didn’t do their job or just don’t get who you are

Your relationship with your parents can be attached to a lot of big feelings of hurt or anger because it’s such a major relationship in your life. They’re your parents – of course it’s going to hurt if you don’t get what you need from them! So if you are struggling with your relationship it can be emotionally overwhelming, to say the least. You might be in a place where you’re end up getting hurt by them so much, you cut them out of your life just to protect yourself. Or maybe you still have a semblance of a relationship but you hide things from them because you know they won’t be able to understand or accept you. Perhaps you try desperately to get their approval and they never give it to you, no matter what successes you have. If any of this sounds familiar, then you are not alone - and this is a blog for you. This is an important puzzle piece to figure out: it’s one of the most powerful foundational relationships in life and can affect your happiness, your life-trajectory and your very understanding of self....

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BlogSarah May B
Journal With Me! A Self-Esteem Building Exercise to Align With Your Priorities

Hi peeps, this is an exercise for you to use to improve your personal alignment with your priorities and simultaneously boost self-esteem. And if you prefer to listen, here’s the podcast version!  It’s actually a process used to heal in any injury in the body – you strengthen the muscles around the area that has been injured in order to give it the time and support to heal.  For example, if you were to hurt yourself in a sport, you might be told by doctors to strengthen the muscles around the injured joint. The same goes for your personality.  The more of yourself that you dedicate to diverse passions and strengths, the stronger you become and the more confident you feel.  It’s also how you can heal yourself the most quickly. When it comes to a painful loss of a part of your definitions of self, your other passions and roles can grow bigger and help support you in the place of what is gone. So if you are looking to become more stable and confident, this is a self-esteem building exercise for you – and I HIGHLY recommend you do it in a journal. It’s a process that applies to everyone and it has to do with the various skills and passions and practices that identify you to you.

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BlogSarah May B
How to Stop Obsessing Over Other People's Thoughts

How to stop obsessing about what’s in other people’s heads and also curb your need for validation from them.

Has it ever happened to you – that you do something nice for someone else and they don’t respond and so part of you is worried they didn’t like it, but then you start to get mad, because you are thinking – they should have appreciated that gesture! And how could they?! So uncaring. Wow – they are really a jerk, after all.  Or, maybe there’s someone in your workplace who gave you a dirty look – and you can’t figure out why, did they hear something? Do they really just dislike you? And if so, why? You didn’t do anything to them. Maybe you try to be nice and they don’t acknowledge you at all and now you just feel uncomfortable. The tension makes you feel nervous and distracted because you are nice! AND didn’t do anything wrong!  If this sounds like you and you do everything in your power to talk yourself out of it, but still can’t seem to soothe the obsessive thoughts of everything from worry to hate to insecurity and self-doubt, then this is a blog for you!

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Prison of Thoughts: Recognizing the Ego That Has Blocked You from Happiness

Okay, yes, this is a melodramatic title but it’s because this is a big deal and it’s causing millions of people to suffer from a whole slew of different side effects. And maybe you can relate – ask yourself if you’ve had a pervasive feeling of anxiety, worry, or a lack of focus that seems to be the new bar for normal. Or maybe you feel hollow no matter what accomplishments you make or what new health regime you try, or even what you do with your time - nothing seems to quench it. You might consider that this state of numbness and ambivalence is the result of a modern condition that robs many of their happiness, inner peace, and self-awareness, keeping them trapped in confused frustration and inaction. What I am explaining is a false identity of “self” that manifests from the dominance of our thoughts. Thoughts that appear to us as the voice of our soul – that dictate how we are feeling, what we want, what we need, what we’re worried about – what we should be doing with our lives to make the frustration stop. And, not to mention, all at the same time – regardless of whether or not we want them to stop.  

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How to Align Your Actions in Love, Career and Health to See Better Results

If you prefer to listen, here's the Podcast Version of this blog.

 

This is for anyone who’s looking to improve their results in a certain area of life.

A lot of the time you don’t get the things you want because you are unknowingly acting against yourself.  Most of the time it’s because you are operating based on your subconscious. So if you’re not getting the results you want in your life, I invite you to examine yourself and your habits so that you might discover what might be working against you.

 

Whether your goal is related to love, work or health, begin by taking an inventory of your behavior. Literally, just begin to take notes and observe your habits, related to this goal. Create a “behavior log” in your phone and write down everything you do that is tied to achieving this goal.  The point is to try and objectively see if there’s something you are allowing to happen in your life that’s not aligned with what you want. You might surprise yourself because most of the time this behavior is totally unconscious. We have no idea how we are blocking ourselves – and sometimes it’s actually self-sabotage. It comes from a strange unconscious fear of the thing we think we want...

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BlogSarah May B
How to Tame Your Inner Control Freak and Better Enjoy Life

Control is an illusion in that you never really have control over what happens in life. We can prep, plan and anticipate things that could potentially happen, and then the best we can do is steer things in a favorable direction. Basically, set the stage for the ideal scenario.  However! Contrary to how that stage might appear, it’s not foolproof as we do not control fate.  The outcome is still completely unwritten and remains completely out of our control.  For many of us, this unknown is completely torturous and the unpredicted outcome is soul-crushing.

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Finding Inner Balance: Tools for Strength Building

This is a follow-up to "Emotionally Raw" because, if you just went through a major traumatic life change like a breakup or a betrayal, in a more pervasive sense you are in a stage of reintegrating your knowledge of life, yourself, and also healing from trauma, while growing into fortified new and improved version of your self. So if you are reeling from a recent discovery or the life you planned fell apart- this is for you. It’s a framework I would like to present to you in the hopes that it gives you a point to focus on as you move through this time. Because – yes, this time is painful, but it’s also a time of growth. You’re growing right now whether you know it or not. So this is my way of saying, “Hey! Look over here! Grow in this direction!”

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Emotionally Raw: Tools for Navigating the Day to Day

This is for anyone who has had something take the wind out of them lately and maybe you’re hurting pretty bad.  The super deep gut pain that makes you want to curl up in a ball in your bed. It's for the moments you have to enter into the world and step back into your routine, in places that make you feel even more broken and exposed.  At a time like this, you are likely feeling more than the pain of your trauma - you're feeling the pain of pure vulnerability.  After a blow, your heart is as fragile as a china figurine of a fawn: just about anything from anyone could take you down. When you are in the initial stage of healing and in a lot of pain, it can be difficult to retain a tether to stability when in particularly unsupportive environments.  That is the result of being exposed and also in pain management and it’s disorienting to say the least, because you feel so incapable of normalcy.  It can be hard to keep a straight face to the world, and really, really hard to keep your eyes from welling up.  The pain, when it’s extreme, comes in waves. It’s hard to manage when you’re in the most supportive environment – doubly so, when you’re trying to hide it and take care of everyday tasks amongst others who don’t know or support you. Whatever the wound and wherever you have to go, this is for you, to hopefully ground you in those moments. To help you manage “normal.”  Because right now, you just have to traverse the time.

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BlogSarah May B
Tips for Training in a Positive Mindset

Hi friends, this is for Stefanie – thanks girl! I hope this helps. And if you prefer to listen, here’s the podcast version of this post.

It’s for anyone who perhaps considers themselves to be a positive person but still has a hard time maintaining a positive mindset. OR maybe you are working on becoming more positive and you’re just not quite there yet. This is a great topic because we all need some form of maintenance – whether you were born with a smile or you have to work on it quite a bit. The gist of it is your mindset and focus take deliberate maintenance. Just like washing your hair or giving your muscles exercise, conditioning your mindset takes daily attention. That doesn’t mean it has to be tedious – in fact, quite the opposite.  Once you start training in something like positivity, you feel positive about that practice.  It’s just like running – when you start feeling full of energy, you look forward to it.  So if you’re in that stage of hesitance or laziness, but you know you need a good positivity maintenance routine – this is a post for you!

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BlogSarah May B
Justin Lyon on Yo Gabba Gabba, Love and Success

Hi friends, this is awesome interview I did with Justin Lyon of Yo Gabba Gabba, Fieldtrip and Unique Camp. It’s targeted at creative people who really want to make a living at doing what they love. And I think something many strive for but it’s really hard to achieve it in reality, so instead they fall into the grooves of an industry or what others before them have told them to do.

 

Today I wanted to talk about being a creative and an entrepreneur so you can find your own perfect life ratio so you can build the life that allows you to be all of you. In other words, merging your life’s loves - and also family, not just work, and career.  

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