Pretty Spiritual Podcast

Creating Positive Relationships

How To Create Healthy Relationships

On a special episode of Pretty Spiritual Podcast, we’re talking about spiritual tools in love relationships. It’s only in really intimate relationships that we are seen in all our moods and aspects. In other words? There’s no hiding the parts of ourselves that we don’t like or that we’d rather other people not see. So join the fun as we share the relationship-building tools that help us be our best selves in romantic partnerships.

We’ve all had our relationship problems. In fact, many of us don’t naturally know how to maintain healthy relationships. Yes, we hear that communication in relationships is the number one thing, but so many of us don’t even know where to start. Good news, we don't have to do it perfectly.

One place we can start is by asking ourselves what we are looking for in our love relationships? If we’re honest, many of us are looking for some magical person who will somehow meet all of our needs. Or maybe we’re looking for worthiness or certainty or self-esteem. So many of us have unspoken contracts that we bring into romantic relationships without ever communicating this to our partners. If we don’t realize we’re even doing this, we’ll be left wondering why they’re frustrated. So fun for everyone!

Maintaining Healthy Relationships

It turns out that the love relationship we’re in is often a mirror for the relationship we have with ourselves. What broken core beliefs are we believing about ourselves? How are we letting these co-create the reality we’re experiencing in our relationships?

Want to learn how to make a relationship work? It’s time to talk spiritual tools, thank the goddess. We can start by looking at ways to take 100% ownership of our own needs and feelings. If our needs can’t be met in our romantic partnership, can we take full responsibility for getting our needs met elsewhere?

It turns out that feeling loved isn’t about having a relationship with another person. It’s something that’s up to each of us to find. What are the vital spiritual connections that sustain us? It's our joyful responsibility to find out!

There are a few other things that help us have reasonable expectations about what being in a love relationship is actually like. We’re not always going to have a shared understanding of reality. As it turns out, conflict is really normal and that healthy conflict actually helps our relationships grow. 

All The Tools You Need 

If we’re really used to unhealthy relationship dynamics, healthy relationship behaviors can feel really counterintuitive. This is especially true is we’re still operating from old or broken beliefs about ourselves and others. A positive relationship requires that we find and work with all those inherited beliefs that caused the dysfunction in the first place.

Where can we find these old core beliefs? We can look at the times we’re pulling to be rescued, playing the victim, or playing the martyr. We can look at our habitual relationship defenses, be honest and kind about what we find, and attempt to put down our armoring. And hey, we can always try not to take ourselves so damn seriously!

We can always role-model how we want our partners to treat us by treating them that way. If we feel safe, we can try to soften and be vulnerable instead of armoring ourselves. We are shoulder to shoulder, not toe to toe. And hey, when all else fails, a little gratitude can save the day!

Loving someone can be hard, but spiritual tools make it easier and more rewarding. What are the spiritual tools that you use in your relationships? Please share your experiences and tools with us. Find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Insight Timer, Google Play, Spotify, Soundcloud, Podbean, and Stitcher (or our Contact page) and share your feelings, thoughts, and anything else! Thanks for listening to our spiritual podcasts. We love ya!

Spiritual Bypassing

What Is Spiritual Bypassing?

This time on Pretty Spiritual Podcast, we’re going to dig into a topic close to our hearts: spiritual bypassing. First off, what is a spiritual bypass? John Welwood coined this term to talk about a trend he observed in spiritual communities. Spiritual bypassing is when we “use spiritual ideas and concepts to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.”

Often, we fall into the trap of spiritual bypassing when we are in the thick of our messy, human process and we don’t love how it’s looking to others or to ourselves. Maybe we think it’s too much or not allowed or taking too long. We discard the messiness of the human process in favor of something that we think will look better to us or others. 

We turn to this because we don’t accept the person who is here today or the experience we’re having. It’s not okay for some reason. Spiritual bypassing is actually a valid tool to pick up when we don’t have the capacity to bear the discomfort of the feelings underneath. Often, we use spiritual bypassing as a shield. It’s a way to protect ourselves from stressful stuff, like our true self and vulnerable work that needs our attention. By avoiding the shadow work that is calling for us, we also avoid growing.

Letting Go Of Judgement

It makes sense that we pick this up as a tool. It actually turns out that spiritual bypassing is a necessary stage of human spiritual development. If you’re seeing signs of this tendency in yourself, you are definitely on the spiritual path! Way to go, fellow travelers. We are cheering for you and ourselves!

So what are some common forms of spiritual bypassing? Some manifestations we have noticed are things like an overly positive focus. Everything is great and complaining is bad and I’m happy and grateful all the time! Or maybe you fall into a different trap like self-deprecation. When we make ourselves bad or wrong, that’s its own kind of bypass. It keeps us from looking at what’s really here when we appraise ourselves accurately. Another popular side step happens around anger, especially for women since so many of us are caught in the trap of believing that anger isn’t spiritual. Or that if we were perfect or spiritual enough, then we’d never get angry. 

John Welwood goes on to say this: “When we are spiritual bypassing, we often use the goal of awakening or liberation to rationalize what I call premature transcendence: trying to rise above the raw and messy side of our humanness before we have fully faced and made peace with it.” And it’s only when we go through the real and messy stuff that we find healing and relief.

It turns out that life is messy and being a human is hard. So what can we do to love ourselves through this phase of our spiritual growth and development and be true to self? How can we let go of how we think it should look and get on board with what’s actually happening?

Are you stuck in bypass mode and wondering how to find yourself? Where is the authentic person who is struggling with the unavoidable messiness of human life? We need those spiritual tools.

Get The Tools You Need 

Time to get those tools! Yes, spiritual bypassing is a tool in itself. But what spiritual tools can we pick up when this one no longer serves us? One helpful thing is to turn toward authenticity. Be who you are, messiness and all. We can learn to be authentic in the moment, whatever that looks like. We can trust that we’re supported enough to feel our feelings and be honest with ourselves about what’s going on inside of us. 

Want even more tool that can help with finding yourself? We love meditation as a grounding tool. When we are grounded and feeling emotionally safe, there’s naturally more room for all the emotions to arise and be felt. Meditation helps us create space to experience all of what’s right here right now, including anger, resentment, fear, and judgement.

We also like spiritual inquiry. Ask yourself questions like, what action requires the most faith right now? We can invite the shadow self into this exercise, fears and all. Ask your whole being, what would I do if I weren’t afraid? Ask the questions and listen for the whisper of the universe. 

Please get in touch and let us know what your experience  is with spiritual bypassing and what works for you. Please share your experiences and tools with us. Find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Insight Timer, Google Play, Spotify, Soundcloud, Podbean, and Stitcher (or our Contact page) and share your feelings, thoughts, and anything else! Thanks for listening to our spiritual podcasts. We love ya!

Emotional Regulation

What Is Emotional Regulation?

This time on Pretty Spiritual Podcast we’re delving into the topic of emotional regulation. How do we make sense of and work with huge feelings without hurting ourselves? Can we start by dipping our toes into the unfelt feelings we think might destroy us? Rather than getting swept up helplessly by the big feelings, how can we learn to be active participants in our emotional lives? 

If you’ve had a confusing relationship with your feelings, this episode is for you. No, we don’t have any final answers, but we do have our own experience and a bunch of helpful tools. Join us in episode 41, as we talk about self regulation of feelings as an act of self love.

Maybe you’re wondering, what is emotional regulation? We’ll definitely get there. But first, let’s start with emotional dysregulation. What does that look like? Feelings come up, we push them away, try not to feel them by disassociating from our bodies, and then the feelings get lost somewhere in our bodies, only to come out sideways.

When emotions come out in big ways, we might take them out on the people around us. Other times, these feelings might collapse us inside ourselves and run our whole lives for hours or days.

So how do we Self Regulate?

When we try to keep ourselves from feeling our feelings, we are setting ourselves up for emotional dysregulation. When we push away or avoid feelings, we get more and more disconnected from ourselves and the reality around us. But the feelings still need to be felt. Eventually, the unfelt feelings flood us. 

Ugh, feelings. We all have them and yes, maybe we begrudgingly agree that it would be good to feel them (however people do that!). But what if we’re not sure where to start? How do we dip our toes into the big stuff without being overtaken by the feeling tsunami?

Okay, now we’re ready to answer the question, what is self regulation? It’s the “ability to respond to the ongoing demands of experience with the range of emotions in a manner that is socially tolerable and sufficiently flexible to permit spontaneous reactions as well as the ability to delay spontaneous reactions as needed.”

Now let’s look at some of the tools that can help us get there. Annie has some especially helpful tools for self regulation in situations that involve trauma feelings. We can learn to experience small doses of the emotional life that threaten to explode outward onto other people or collapse us into ourselves.

Get the Tools You Need 

We especially love this tool called emotional sequencing. It’s simple, just look at the things around you, name one object and its color. Do that three times. Then name these objects and their colors backward. Instead of getting lost in feelings, this tool brings our brains and bodies to the present moment and the more evolved part of our brains. Hooray for the prefrontal cortex! 

And here are some life tools you can try whenever. They are simple ways we can make friends with and take gentle care of the overwhelm. When we’re healing from the big stuff, we don’t have as many resources to cope. Okay, here’s a simple but mind-blowing tool: do less! Have one social engagement a day. Rest a lot. Plan self-care for emotional encounters with triggering people.

Prayer and meditation are also so helpful. We're learning to take care of our internal experience without closing down our hearts to others. It helps us to share with safe people what’s happening with our feelings. When we can say it out loud, we make more space for our experience.

Still want more? If you want to see all the Annie tools, send us a message on our contact page and we’ll forward them to your inbox.

Thank you to our sweet listeners for writing in with comments and suggestions and stories. We are so healed by the one-on-one connections that our shared vulnerability makes possible. Again, if you want even more self regulation skills, get in touch with us and we’ll share all the other great tools Annie has used in her PTSD journey.

Then get in touch and let us know what you about emotional regulation and what works for you. Please share your experiences and tools with us. Find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Insight Timer, Google Play, Spotify, Soundcloud, Podbean, and Stitcher (or our Contact page) and share your feelings, thoughts, and anything else! Thanks for listening to our spiritual podcasts. We love ya.

Spiritual Awakenings

How To Have A Spiritual Experience

Today on Pretty Spiritual Podcast, we’re talking about spiritual awakenings. If you feel overwhelmed or confused or intimidated, we can totally understand. We weren’t sure what people meant when they talked about spiritual experiences until it happened to us.

No, a spiritual awakening doesn’t necessarily involve a white light, burning bush, or celestial fanfare. (But no disrespect if it did... in fact, we might get a little jealous!) It turns out we get to decide for ourselves what constitutes a spiritual awakening.

Since we get to make sense of our own spiritual life, there’s no one path to our personal destination. For some of us, these moments are dramatic and well-defined. And for others, they might be slow and almost imperceptible changes. A spiritual awakening can feel like a big moment or a slow change over the course of our lifetime.

What Is Spirituality?

In episode 40, we’ll share our personal experiences with spiritual awakenings. They look different for each of us, which means they’ll probably look different for you. It can feel a little unnerving to suddenly realize that making sense of spirituality is up to us. But isn’t it also kinda cool?

This means that your spiritual journey is specially tailored to your unique sensitivities, sense of humor, and personal understanding. One of our favorite things is the sweet feeling of an inside joke with a higher power all our own. 

So if you’re struggling to make sense of your own spirituality or feeling far away from what used to feel sacred, we can relate. We hope that this episode can help spark some curiosity or connection inside your heart.

Finding The Path Forward 

When we’re searching for spiritual connection, it can help to hold questions or inquiries open to the great goodness in the universe. We love questions like these: Where does it feel safe and warm? What moves you? Where do you feel like the universe is giving you a little wink? When do you feel the most present and alive? What does your heart or spirit long for? What helps you feel the most at home with life? You can trust yourself to find the path.

If you’re looking for a spiritual experience, we encourage you to ask questions (or, dare we say, "pray?") Then, listen for answers to those questions (we hear some people call this "meditation"). The universe might whisper, so listen carefully. You’re asking yourself, what is spirituality? But maybe a more answerable question is: what is spirituality to you? Search inside yourself and see what you find!

Then get in touch and let us know what spiritual awakening means to you. How does spiritual experience show up in your life? Please share your experiences and tools with us. Find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Insight Timer, Google Play, Spotify, Soundcloud, Podbean, and Stitcher (or our Contact page) and share your feelings, thoughts, and anything else! Thanks for listening to our spiritual podcasts. We love ya!

How to Deal with Jealousy

How To Stop Being Jealous

This time on Pretty Spiritual Podcast, we tackle the swamplands of jealousy. (Remember how we felt about self-pity?) It's going to be a little cringey. Don’t worry, us too! In episode 39, we’ll look at this feeling, investigate its common causes, and see what it has to teach us about ourselves. Wondering how to overcome jealousy? Come join the party!

Jealousy is one of those emotions that’s so hard to look at directly because it can feel toxic for so many of us. But today we’re going to try something new. What if we treat jealousy like it’s just another intelligent emotion pointing us toward something that needs our attention? What can we learn from this feeling about ourselves and our needs? It’s a tall order, but here we go.

What Is Jealousy?

To start, what is jealousy? Here’s what Psychology Today had to say by way of a definition:

“Jealousy is a complex emotion that encompasses feelings ranging from fear of abandonment to rage and humiliation. It strikes people of all ages, genders, and sexual orientations, and is most typically aroused when a person perceives a threat to a valued relationship from a third party. The threat may be real or imagined. Not limited to romantic relationships, jealousy can also arise among siblings competing for parental attention, among co-workers, or in friendships.”

So, why is it so hard to just say the words I’m jealous? Why is it so hard to own our feelings in a loving way that doesn’t punish us or the people who have triggered this feeling in us?

That’s where all the stickiness comes in. Before we start thinking about how not to be jealous, we have to acknowledge the top internal causes of jealousy. And pretty much all of them have that familiar swampy feel. 

Why Am I So Jealous?

Wondering, why am I so jealous? Here are the top five reasons: low self-esteem (LOL, duh?), neuroticism (oh good!), feelings of insecurity and possessiveness, dependence on your partner, feelings of inadequacy in your relationship, and an anxious attachment style (a chronic fear that your partner will abandon you or not love you enough). So much fun!

Are you experiencing jealousy in relationships? Often this feeling can interrupt intimacy, both with our true selves and the people we love. If you’re wondering how to stop being jealous, we’ve got a few ideas to share.

Firstly, feelings are not facts! What happens when we’re finally willing to witness our feelings without believing that they represent reality? What is it like to look underneath the jealousy for the emotional states that gave rise to this feeling? This is where we really learn how to get over jealousy. And spoiler alert: it’s an inside job.

What’s jealousy like in your life? Please share your experiences and tools with us. Find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Insight Timer, Google Play, Spotify, Soundcloud, Podbean, and Stitcher (or our Contact page) and share your feelings, thoughts, and anything else! Thanks for listening to our spiritual podcasts. We love ya

Stop Playing the Blame Game

How To  Stop Blaming Others

This week on Pretty Spiritual Podcast, we’re looking at all the reasons we play the blame game. 

Some of us are really quick to place the blame on others (do the words it’s all your fault mean anything to you?). For others, it can feel natural to pick up the blame that others are putting down. Don’t worry, though. We’ve got plenty of experience to go around!

So how do you usually play the blame game? Are you someone who habitually makes life problems about someone else? Or maybe you do place a lot of blame, but not on others. Some of us like to place all the blame on ourselves. You might be someone who blames “god” or Fate or some other entity for all the unfortunate things that happen in life.

No matter where you land on this spectrum, we welcome you to the conversation. We’ll look at all the different ways we find fault and assign responsibility. But we won’t stop there.

We’ll look at all these natural tendencies so that we can identify our habits and look toward spiritual tools for growth. It turns out that blaming others is a pretty natural, human strategy. So why do we do this blame shifting?

Blame Makes Sense

According to psychologists, there are a few reasons we blame when stressed. Like we said, it’s a great defense mechanism. If it’s not my fault, then I don’t have to change anything about my behavior or attitudes! Duh, makes so much sense. We also pick up blame when we’re on the defensive and in attack mode. 

Blame also helps us feel like we are making sense of a world we don’t often understand. It turns out we can’t always explain or make sense of the way we act or the way others act. Imputing motive and assigning responsibility is one way we try to manage a world that is outside our control. 

Also, it turns out that people lie when faced with admitting failure and taking self responsibility. Why not just make something up that relieves us of any personal fault or responsibility. Yup, it makes sense. And finally, it’s easier to blame someone else than to take responsibility for your actions. Okay, we get it. Blame makes sense and we all do it.

Tools For Self Responsibility

Wondering how to be an adult and stop making life’s misfortune someone else’s fault? That’s where the tools come in! We’ll look at how to stop playing the blame game and start taking personal responsibility for ourselves and our lives. It turns out that the stance of self responsibility actually feels better to us. Spiritual tools can feel so counterintuitive in that way!

We’ll talk about what it means to take full responsibility for the things that belong to us, as well as what it can look like to set boundaries when people blame us for stuff that actually isn’t ours. Join in the fun now to hear more about the ways we’re shifting our attitudes so that we don’t have to feel so victimized. That’s right, there’s only one thing we do get to take control of: our own attitudes and behaviors. Here’s to owning what’s ours with a sense of humor!

What’s blame like in your life? Please share your experiences and tools with us. Find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Insight Timer, Google Play, Spotify, Soundcloud, Podbean, and Stitcher (or our Contact page) and share your feelings, thoughts, and anything else.

Money

Money Matters

This week your spiritual bffs are talking about money. We’ll give you all a moment to stampede away and  then another moment to let the dust settle. Anyone still with us? To those of you who are still here, get ready for the uncomfortable fun ahead! Though it’s often something we’d rather deny or avoid, we’re looking at our relationships with money in today’s episode. 

More than just looking at financial stress, we’re digging deep to uncover our core attitudes about enough. Money isn’t good or bad. It’s just a mutual agreement, a neutral tool. But it’s one place our limiting beliefs and scarcity mentality can get triggered big time. We often end up assigning our core beliefs about life to our financial lives.

What does this look like? Some of us with scarcity mindset think we’ll never have enough. Some of us mistake money for love. Others think that just a little more will make us feel safe. And still others are so afraid to even look at money that we bury our heads in the sand and wait for someone to come rescue us from financial responsibility. 

So if the idea of looking directly at your money problems feels scary, we can totally relate. We’ve been putting this episode off for weeks now! But today we’re finally willing to look at our financial situations with some spiritual perspective and a bunch of great tools.

Attitudes About Enough

Are you experiencing financial stress? Does it feel uncomfortable or downright dangerous to look at the relationship you have with money and the attitudes or beliefs that sustain it? Don’t worry, we’ll walk through all the scary stuff together!

After sharing a little about our own financial issues and the money behaviors that exemplify our patterns, we’ll share the tools that are helping bring this whole messy process into awareness. We’ll look at simple ways to bring awareness to our finances that will decrease anxiety and increase integrity. We’ll talk about the attitudes that help us adopt an abundance mindset rather than a fear of not enough. Join in the fun and listen now!

We are always looking for more tools, so please reach out and share yours with us. What’s helping you take responsibility for your finances and look at money with a spiritual perspective? Share yourself and your tools with the spiritual community so we can all heal together.

Find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Insight Timer, Google Play, Spotify, Soundcloud, Podbean, and Stitcher (or our Contact page) and share your feelings, thoughts, and anything else.

Ending Self Destructive Behavior

Sensitive Material Ahead

Sweet friends, we want to let you know that today’s episode is a sensitive one. We’re talking about self destructive behavior and this content may be triggering for some listeners. If this episode starts to feel overwhelming or triggering, we’ve got plenty of other episodes you can check out.

All we have to offer is our own experience with this topic, but if that isn’t what you need, we wholeheartedly encourage you to find the support you need. We want to reiterate that we are not experts or medical professionals. If you’re struggling with self-harm and need help, please send a text to the crisis text line at 741741. You can also call (800) 273-TALK (8255) to reach trained crisis counselors.

Cycles Of Self-Destruction

Do you struggle with addictive or compulsive behavior? Are there behaviors you find yourself doing that cause harm to you but that also somehow promise relief? All three of us have struggled with self destructive behavior patterns that bring momentary relief but that end up hurting our physical, emotional, and spiritual selves.

If we zoom out to see the ways we are undermining or sabotaging our integrity, future happiness, self esteem, financial security, our physical bodies, most of us will be able to relate to this phenomenon. So we’re also going to include behaviors in this conversation that fit into the broader container of self sabotage. What if the way we are self harming causes injury to our integrity? Or if the destructive behaviors we do habitually cause harm to our relationships and to our self esteem? What ways do we distract ourselves from life that seem to give us relief in the moment but actually turn out to be self sabotaging in the long run?

Why do people self harm? According to psychiatrists, the reason we engage in self injurious behavior is not simply to harm ourselves. When we engage in self-harm and self destruction, we are “taking extreme measures to distract [ourselves] from the challenges of daily life or attempting to release [ourselves] from unbearable mental anguish.”

Moving Toward Self Soothing

This is helpful information because it points to the unmet needs that are likely underneath these misguided attempts to self soothe. We can use this information to guide us toward attending to those needs. Rather than punting those unmet needs into the future with self-destructive patterns, we can turn toward what we really need: a healthy way to self soothe.

We’re hoping that we’ll be able to offer some tools that can help all of us move away from these kinds of behaviors and toward self-soothing. We’ll talk about how we’ve learned to monitor and respond effectively to emotional dysregulation. Plus we’ll share some other really simple and practical tools that you can try today.

We are always looking for more tools, so please reach out and share yours with us. What’s helping you with believing in yourself and trusting your inherent goodness? Find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Insight Timer, Google Play, Spotify, Soundcloud, Podbean, and Stitcher (or our Contact page) and share your feelings, thoughts, and anything else.

Navigating Life Transitions

Going Through Changes

This time on Pretty Spiritual Podcast, we’re talking about how to find our way through difficult changes in our lives. How flexible and emotionally resilient are we when adapting to change? How can we meet the small ups and downs, as well as the big life transitions, with perspective and a positive outlook? Welcome to the in-between place. Let’s get cozy!

So what exactly do we mean when we talk about going through life changes? We’re talking about changes in behaviors, geographical moves, movement and change within relationships, what it’s like switching jobs or careers, the birth and death of people close to us, and all the other situations and circumstances in life subject to impermanence. Well, that’s pretty much all of it!

Whether we’re ending relationships or changing careers or simply attempting to let go of old habits or ideas, there are so many times in life when we find ourselves “in transition.” In episode 35, we are neither here nor there. We’re somewhere in between.

When we’re going through big changes in our lives, they’re usually easy to identify. But what about the smaller and slower changes, like incremental spiritual growth? Or the more subtle life transitions with respect to our attitudes and core beliefs? Today, we’ll dive into the liminal space in between what has just passed and whatever comes next.

The human tendency is to reach for control in the midst of our wild and uncontrollable lives. But we’re finally seeing how these strategies actually cause us more suffering. This means that we’re often impatient with not knowing. This can look like planning outcomes, the experience of fear, a desire to control, feelings of regret about the past, or thinking that we know what the future should look like. So if we are going to suffer in the thick of the human experience, how can we make it as easy as possible to live and make a change for the better when we encounter life’s most difficult moments? 

An Uncommon Opportunity To Grow 

Recognizing life’s inherent uncertainty gives us the rare opportunity to let ourselves be carried by grace. We’ll each share about the big and little life transitions that are happening for us, as well as the spiritual tools that serve us best when coping with change. Big transitions give us the uncommon opportunity to recognize that we don’t actually know what comes next. 

We’ll talk about the ways we’re attempting to be patient and trusting with the unknown. We’ll pick up tools like patience, humility, perseverance, self-responsibility, and maybe a sense of humor?

Wondering how to be resilient when life throws you a curveball? We’ll share the tools and principles that help us belong to this life, especially when it’s hard. Plus, we’ll reflect on past difficulties to remind ourselves and each other that our own experience is evidence that transformation and transition can lead us somewhere unexpectedly wonderful or important. Instead of trying to figure out what happens next, what happens when we attempt to love the questions themselves?

No matter what’s going on outside or around us, we do get actually get to choose how we show up to witness and care for our inner experience. Instead of being a victim of life’s circumstances, what if we practice believing that the whole universe is conspiring for our benefit? Tune in to find out!

We’re always looking for more tools, so please reach out and share yours with us. What’s helping you with believing in yourself and trusting your inherent goodness? Find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Insight Timer, Google Play, Spotify, Soundcloud, Podbean, and Stitcher (or our Contact page) and share your feelings, thoughts, and anything else.

Spiritual Friendship

Find Your Spiritual BFFs

This week on Pretty Spiritual Podcast we’re talking about lifesaving moments of spiritual friendship and encouragement. Thought we invented the term “spiritual friendies”? We actually borrowed it from the Pali phrase kalyana mitta or spiritual friend. Today, we’re lucky to have a strong sense of spiritual community in our lives. But it wasn’t always like this.

When first starting out on spiritual paths, each of us experienced loneliness, fear of people, and a deep sense that we didn’t belong. We were afraid of emotional intimacy, vulnerability, and letting people get to know the real us. So in episode 34, we’re talking about the people who encouraged us to get intimate with ourselves and the ways we try to pay that that loving encouragement forward by showing up as safe friends for others. 

Of course, we’ve all benefited so much from the examples of love and warmth and friendship we’ve gotten from each other. But we also know what it’s like to feel alone and question whether we belong at all.

Are you struggling to create meaningful spiritual relationships in your life? Does your brain say stuff like “I don’t belong in this world”? Wondering how to be vulnerable in your relationships (and maybe also feeling a little grossed out by it at the same time)? Or maybe you’re seeking spiritual inspiration but aren’t sure where to turn.

We have definitely been there. If you’re feeling alone with your humanness or on your spiritual path, we hope our experience can encourage you! That’s why we’re sharing about the experiences and friendships that helped us trust we belonged to life. We’ll talk about what friends said to us in moments where we were down on ourselves and needed help remembering that deep spiritual connection is truly a possibility for all of us. 

Spiritual Friendship Is for Everyone 

Join in as we share our favorite tools for growing spiritual friendships and for showing up as safe friends. No matter where you are and what spiritual path you’re on, we love you and we want to be your spiritual friends! And if you’re still searching for your spirit posse, you can try things like showing up for events at local spiritual communities, striking up friendly conversations with people who look even more uncomfortable than you, and investing in relationships that feel safe and warm. 

Making friends as a grownup can be really awkward and uncomfortable. It turns out that these feelings are actually… normal? But the best part is this: the only thing you need to implement some simple tools is a willingness to show up and feel weird! So easy, right?

Be gentle with yourself as you experiment with new friendships and growing your spiritual home group. If we continue offering loving acceptance to ourselves, we’ll grow in our capacity to offer it to others. We can become the safe and loving friends that the world really needs. No matter where you are on your journey, we’re so glad to be on it with you, we think you’re doing an amazing job, and we believe in you! 

We’re always looking for more tools, so please reach out and  share yours with us. What’s helping you with believing in yourself and trusting your inherent goodness? Find us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Insight Timer, Google Play, Spotify, Soundcloud, Podbean, and Stitcher (or our Contact page) and share your feelings, thoughts, and anything else.