Andrew J Heinz Counseling

09/16/2025

This was a prevalent and salient topic in our most recent emotional self-management workshop, and it can be hard to wrap your head around at first, but hear me out.

If you want to get better at emotional self-management, and if you want to get better at feeling & processing your emotions, you have to learn how to shift the focus away from the story about the other person, and onto you and your needs & feelings.

It’s easy to get caught in a state of rumination and spinning out, focusing on how disrespectful or terrible the other person is.
That’ll keep the anger pulsing, the heart pumping, or the tears pouring.
But focusing on *them* doesn’t help *you* process the event or emotion.

Start by attuning to the sensations you’re feeling and allow them to exist. Validate that they are there for a real reason.
Quiet the narrative about the other person/people.
Give yourself space to feel your heart pumping, or to let the tears fall.
Notice and meet your feelings with compassion.
Allow your fear, anger, sadness, anxiety - let it be present in your body. Don’t try to rush it away.
Ask yourself what it is you’re needing? What is the hurt that was triggered in you by this situation?
Is it a lack of safety?
It is wanting to feel seen and heard?
Is it not feeling important?
Is it feeling disconnected?
Is it not feeling safe to be yourself?

Meet that unmet need and that feeling with validation.
The feeling is real. It matters.
Meet it with safety. With self-compassion.

Then, THEN allow yourself to come back to the situation at hand.
It will give you more information for communicating your needs and what’s happening within you, and will help you view the situation from more grounded and less reactive space.

Can you apply this to current world event feelings? Absolutely.

And if you're looking for more support with what to do after - how to separate out what's yours and theirs, and how to communicate more effectively — the Relationship Management Workshop begins Oct 23rd, where we'll learn lots of tools and practices together in small community (max 12 people).
This is the LAST workshop of 2025! It will sell out, so register soon!

https://theeqschool.co/relationship-management-workshop

09/10/2025

Hi everyone!

I’m excited to share that I’ve officially launched some new resources on my website today!

andrewjheinz.com

Somatic Foundations: The Four Pillars for Healing Anxiety & Trauma
- Manual & Workbook (FREE download)

Repair Protocol for Healing Rupture Guide
- $11.00

I’m really encouraged by how these came together and even more resources are on the way soon.

Hope you enjoy - and please share with those you feel may benefit. 🤍

Warmly,
Andrew

08/25/2025

Check out my new blog post: “The nervous systems role in anger, shame and grief.”

The Nervous System’s Role in Anger, Shame & Grief

08/15/2025

08/12/2025

If we don’t trust ourselves on a deep & foundational level, we look outside for certainty. We grasp for control in an attempt to find grounding and safety.
We need things to go or look a certain way, for others to behave just so, or to know ahead of time what might happen so that we can plan for what to do.

Some people will say, “I trust myself to do it correctly, I just don’t trust that they’ll do it right.”

What these people are missing is that good leadership and teamwork (yes, in partnership, families, and friendship, too) requires room for flexibility.
Innovation and creativity allow room for mistakes and new ways of thinking so that we can learn from them, and find solutions that we don’t already know.
It allows other people to step up, to utilize their strengths, which may be very different from yours. It allows them to also engage in the relationship, project, or activity as an active participant with agency; to have a stake in the outcome. And they might get there via a route you’d never take.

And this is uncomfortable. It often requires the discomfort of not getting somewhere as quickly as we would like.
It requires the vulnerability of not appearing perfect or being the one with the answer.
It requires allowing space for mistakes to happen; sometimes resources are lost or feelings get hurt.
But this is how we learn, grow, and see each other more deeply.
This is how we build something together, where more people are invested in the outcome because they had a stake in its creation.

The next time you find yourself incredibly impatient with someone else or wanting to micromanage or control an outcome, ask yourself, “What am I afraid might happen?”
“What would really happen if we take a little longer? What would that mean about me?”

See if you can bring safety, attunement, and acceptance to this fear inside yourself.
And see if you can allow just a little more wiggle room.

The 12 month Cycle Breakers Program begins September 2nd.
If you're working to deepen your self-trust and soften your need for control, that's one of the things I hear most from participants in this program — and boy does it feel grounding, nourishing, and healing to learn how to turn inward and trust what you find.
Small group, lead by me. Space is limited and we're filling up!
https://theeqschool.co/cycle-breakers

08/12/2025

💛💛💛

08/12/2025

https://andrewjheinz.com/resource-articles/f/safety-stability-and-security

The Foundation of Secure Attachment

08/07/2025

Thank you to Liz Newman Writer

08/07/2025

You are not the arbiter of shame. And neither am I.

It’s not our job to make people feel like s**t for their behavior.

What IS our job, is to communicate our boundary/preference/limit/need to the other side in way that takes responsibility for our feelings and what we’re willing to tolerate. To be vulnerable about how we’ve been impacted, and about how we’d like things to go in the future.

That’s a heck of a lot harder than just making someone else bad & wrong.

The impulse to shame is old, and it’s everywhere.
But it’s counter-intuitive;
it does not do what you want it to do.

You want it to make the other person fully understand the impact of their behavior so that they won’t do it again. You want them to feel what you feel so that they understand.

Instead, shaming brings up the other person’s walls, usually makes you unsafe and more of an ‘other,’ and creates a disconnect between you and that person. And if they already have trauma in this area, good luck adding shame to it (it’s going to make you very unsafe).

Sure, sometimes it’s effective in that the behavior stops. But it also begins to weaken the bond and the trust between the two of you.

The reason the world is so seemingly full of narcissists is because of how much we try to use shame to change other people. We project our pain onto them, hoping they’ll understand, and instead they absorb it.

But when you take it all apart, you realize that if we want to stay connected to someone and have them better understand the impact of their behavior, and want to grow together in the future, we have to do the hard, emotional self management work of vulnerability communicating this to the person we care about.

If you want some help learning how to communicate more effectively, especially in conflict, that’s just one aspect of what we'll work on in the 12 month Cycle Breakers program beginning September 2nd. Come learn new tools and ways of operating within human systems that might get you different results.
https://theeqschool.co/cycle-breakers