How empaths experience the world and the permission to explore, expand, and own our callings. Nikki explores self esteem, resiliency, challenge, vulnerability, and expression. I hope this week's episode offers a deeper understanding of our highly sensitive empathic gifts, and how to grow into our worth by taking up space and claiming our callings. Shout outs to the courageous and inspiring Lisa Tahir and Marianne Williamson. Light and love!

The Bob Ross inspired episode is HERE! Wisdom from one of my favorite Wise Men, The Joy of Painting creator and PBS star, Bob Ross. I share what he meant to me as a child and how I'm channeling his grounded peace. I hope I do his memory justice with this episode. We dive deep into some of his favorite sayings and unpack the wisdom of 'no mistakes, just happy little accidents.' Light and love, Nikki

What are we made of? Have you been thinking about this since hearing the nursery rhyme; snips & snails & puppy dogs' tails? I HAVE. This episode is about the differences & similarities between HSPs & Energy Vampires. It takes understanding of these dynamics for a HSP to shield (with boundaries) against emotional vampire-ing & stop allowing yourself to get sucked in. As adults we can do what we couldn't as children---learn how to keep energy vampires OUT and our energy IN.

I share something vulnerable and ripe for judgement in this week's episode. A personal story about the highly sensitive struggle to manage stress, create peace, calm, & act in love. Featuring Queen Dagmar. Most Highly Sensitive People& trauma survivors report a love-hate relationship with high sensitivity. Radical personal assertiveness and acceptance is required (yes I'm saying REQUIRED) to shift from sensitivity feeling like a burden to a superpower.

I'm excited to share with you a passage from a favorite healing book by Paulo Coelho, Warrior of the Light. It inspired a meditation I wrote to help us flow when life throws obstacles in our path. Most of us have heard the fun fact that our bodies are mostly water. I hope this episode and meditation help you feel how powerful you truly are and how you can learn to use your energy & power to flow around, through, above, below, and beyond.

Hello Tribe! Today we break down what it means to check in with ourselves & grow mindful muscles to take the very best care of deep, expansive selves. A little intuition vs. anxiety, internal vs. external, and oldie-but-goodie borrowed from Alcoholics Anonymous sayings, HALT: exploring Hungry, Angry, Lonely, Tired, as a check in strategy. Sometimes it's the simple things that go over our heads or we can over complicate as Highly Sensitive People.

I've had negotiation on my mind, Ya'll. Negotiation. It's as inescapable as grief and we get just as much education in how to do it. Zilch! Nada! Nothing! Sensitives and Survivors can really struggle in the face of the vibes that come from hard-ball negotiation tactics. I hope this week's episode helps shine light on the areas we can own and grow to become better negotiators in life.

Imagination, worry, holding onto what's negative and facing change to let go of worst case scenario thinking and Nikki models a script of healing self talk.

On top of the general tensions & chaos of 2020, I'm seeing lots of heartache & change for highly sensitive people. Energies are a-churnin' Ya'll!!!! As we face big changes & big unknowns as a tribe and individually we will be challenged to let go and move on in many ways. I share a story about my old supervisor, Gus, a Spiritual Father, who lovingly helped me when I was a super green therapist & human being & taught me by showing me simplicity & truth in letting go.

To consider compatibility I had to first understand and accept more about my personality and temperament--not what I thought my temperament and personality were supposed to be, but how I was made, how I am, what's changeable within myself and what isn't. I hope this week's episode opens the conversation of compatibility and workability in partnership to help us strengthen our existing relationship with self, current partners, inner circle.

Those of us in the Highly Sensitive Tribe can be so so hard on ourselves. I've learned over the years that HSPs and survivors tend to double down on personal pressure to 'just figure it out' when figuring it out might not be on the table in any given moment. This week's episode is about THAT--I share what I've learned to do when I just don't know what to do. Hope you enjoy it! Light and love!

Let's talk about burnout compassion fatigue, compartmentalization and denial. Therapists are taught about burnout before we see our 1st patient. lots of you know about burnout. I like the physical definitions of burnout to explain how it feels emotionally. "The failure of an electrical device or component through overheating. physical and mental collapse."

Exploring the Book Toxic Parents by Susan Forward Overcoming their hurtful legacy and reclaiming your life, levels of dysfunction, healing and boundaries.

So much to process when it comes to coming out of the shadows of racism to heal individually, as Americans, and around the world. Stress management, letting go and meditating to help us pace for the marathon of an awakened life.

Interview with Tracie Collins of National Black Doulas Association and support for Black Lives Matter. This interview was recorded a week or so before protesting began in the US. I hope this episode shines light on the broader issues beyond police brutality and violence that affect Black people, like 5x higher birthing mortality rate. The healing we must do as a country is immense and it is happening. I'm committed to teaching about change, personal responsibility, and the inner family dynamics of the white racist police family--I come from one--and what it takes to evolve and shed the poison as we move forward as individuals and as a society. Things always seem darkest before dawn, as the saying goes. I plan to be here for the clean, bright, morning we are all ready for. Find Tracie Collins, learn, give or receive support at https://www.blackdoulas.org and spread her life saving message.

In this episode we read The Book Of Possibility Understanding the primal ways we are programmed to look for problems helps us understand our task to mindfully shift to possibility in the modern world. Honored to read ya'll a book! Find Courtney Cox Smith's The Book of Possibility, now available on Amazon.

Sharing some of my own road through poverty, struggle, and humbling myself in the name of survival. I hope it helps anyone who is out there facing economic uncertainty, fear, and (hopefully not) desperation. I name the societal shame trap of facing 'taking a job that's beneath me,' and that financial hardship is a major player in suicidal ideation and a continuation of anxiety/depression and PTSD symptoms. As many enter (or deepen) financial uncertainty within our covid economy, I want to keep talking about money, hope, resiliency, surviving to thriving, understanding these deep and tender, generational and worth-impacting dynamics. For the record, our worth as individuals does not change. My worth and your worth remain, fixed, no matter our financial value or comfort, if there is one dollar or millions, even when our feelings try to say otherwise. Visit https://www.patreon.com/emotionalbadass for exclusive episodes

There’s so much for us to learn by observing our relationship to irritability, anxiety, and making mistakes as we evolve, break cycles, and grow emotional intelligence for introverts and extroverts. I hope there’s something in this episode to help us own what needs owning and help us let go of what doesn’t serve us. Might want to pull out a journal for this one!

If you wait for courage before you act, then this episode is for you! I share how I found courage through the experience of skydiving--I hope it helps you understand your own relationship with bravery and challenge.

Slowing down is essential in healing and easier said than done. This longer meditation supports rewiring and retraining the nervous system with mindfulness, intention, and grounded calm to slow down to integrate mind and body. Strongly recommended for anyone experiencing, FNET Fear of Not Enough Time and healing performance based esteem or perfectionism.