Unmanaged anxiety can make us feel out of control.  It can make us irritable within our relationships. Anxiety can keep us from having new experiences that deepen our enjoyment of life, deepen our ability to connect with others and help us learn new skills.

Anger is a potent emotion.  It can give us the energy to create necessary change.  It can also cause us to be destructive, to ourselves and others.  Just as anger reveals to us where we identify injustice, it also reveals to us where we feel vulnerable, helpless and disempowered.

In the words of Florence Welch of Florence and the Machine, "We all have a hunger."  Though this hunger is often for love, companionship, understanding and a sense of self worth, all too often food, shopping, superficial sexual behavior, substances and the Internet are far more easily accessible.

The ability to love and be loved is one of the most enriching experiences in life. So often in our drive to feel connected and loved, we mistakenly accept control, enmeshment and/or codependence. In adapting to unhealthy boundaries within relationships, our grip on our sense of self becomes weaker. 

The lessons we were taught in early life about connection to others follow us into adulthood.  Learning to protect yourself from over-stressed, emotionally immature or simply unskilled caregivers worked for you when you were a child.  The problem is that those lessons now keep you emotionally isolated and from experiencing satisfaction in your relationships.