Fresh Angles for Podcasts, Radio, and Media
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**Women aren’t burned out because they’re weak—**they’re burned out because they’re living inside systems that don’t fit how women actually operate
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Why women must design personal and professional systems that honor their biology, emotional reality, and energy—not fight them
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Emotional Age™: why chronological age tells us very little about how women show up in love, work, money, health, and leadership
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Why empowerment is no longer about self-improvement, but self-alignment
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Midlife isn’t a breakdown—it’s a systems reset revealing what no longer works
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Emotional Age: What Is It?
Most of us have heard about Biological Age. It is a scientific concept that measures how well, or badly, your body is functioning relative to your Chronological Age. For example, you may be sixty years old but you’ve eaten well, exercised, drank plenty of clean water, minimized stress and so on. Your body might be functioning as well as someone twenty years younger than you as a result of your self-care. We’ve also heard stories about thirty-year-olds who have lived too hard and recklessly, leaving themselves with bodies and hearts that bear extra decades’ worth of scars. Emotional Age is a similar concept to Biological Age, but rather than predicting how young or old our physical bodies are, Emotional Age helps us understand how empowered or disempowered we are emotionally. It helps explain how we’ve been communicating, compromising, socializing, and interacting with others.
The Empowerment Spectrum of Communication
Is your communication style empowering you to live life to the fullest or is it limiting you? Emotional Age expert Crystal Andrus Morissette reveals the Empowerment Spectrum of communication styles and explains how it affects our life experience.
How Emotional Age Shows Up In Love
Are you acting the part of a balanced, whole, actualized adult in your relationship, or are you playing the part of a child or a parent? Learn how to recognize your Emotional Age in love.
Empowered Parenting
What archetype are you parenting from? Are you bringing unhealthy baggage from your past into your role as a parent? Here’s how to identify your Emotional Age in parenting and move towards a healthier parent-child relationship.
Is Your Emotional Age Controlling Your Life? Here's How to Change It.
The Martyr, the Chubby Bubby, the Perfectionist, the Charmer: these are some of the most common Emotional Age archetypes. Maybe there are even some specific people that come to mind when hearing these labels. Best-selling author Crystal Andrus Morissette has brilliantly broken these down into three core Emotional Age archetypes: Daughter Energy, Mother Energy, and Woman Energy. Many women are surprised to find that chronological age has little to do with how they are showing up. Crystal shares tips for learning what Emotional Age you’re currently showing up in and how you can start to heal, learn to communicate, and become your most empowered self.
Peaceful or Passive? There's a Big Difference.
Many people believe they are peaceful. They do all they can to try and "keep the peace." Maybe that means not speaking their mind to avoid confrontation, even though they’re unhappy with a situation. Maybe that means putting others' needs before their own, or maybe not even letting their own needs be heard, all in an effort to "keep the peace." Unfortunately, they may be showing up as the opposite of peaceful: passive. Crystal Andrus Morissette uses her Empowerment Spectrum to differentiate between these two very opposite ways of being and help people become truly at peace in their lives.
Women Under the Microscope
All over the world, women often seem to be “under the microscope,” so to speak. In our Western culture, that often takes the form of things like fat shaming or questioning a woman’s femininity if she exhibits more brains than beauty; on the other hand, we assume she can’t be intelligent if she is beautiful. Crystal will share how we can begin to deal with these kind of issues.
Women Empowering Women – Women Disempowering Women
In these divisive of times, where women are being called to come together to support and heal each other, there is still a type of woman (Daughter Energy) who consciously or unconsciously supports patriarchy by undermining other women. Crystal will explain why this is happening and what to do about it.
Women's Empowerment is Not Anti-Man
With the rise of the #MeToo and #TimesUp movement, many men talk about how it's a scary time to be a man. Empowering women is not at the sake of disempowering men. It is about coming together, understanding our differences, respecting our strengths, and creating a world of gender equality.
Trauma Doesn't Need to Define You
Abuse or trauma often leaves people feeling hopeless or fearful of the future, but trauma doesn't need to define us for life. After overcoming horrendous abuse, neglect, and betrayal, best-selling author Crystal Andrus Morissette teaches women how to recontextualize their pain and suffering so that they can become the (s)hero of their own lives.
Feel the Feeling Without Becoming the Emotion
Emotions are different from feelings. A feeling is simply a visceral reaction to an outside stimulus. It has no thought. It has no judgment. It is not right or wrong. It simply is, happening here and now. It has no attachment or connection to the past or future. It isn’t angry, sad, or happy; it just is – a sign, an instantaneous sensation within the body – it is our “gut instinct.” Emotions have the added component of thought. When we react to a feeling we begin telling ourselves a story about it; we attach a belief to it. Our beliefs are created by our view of the world. Beliefs create emotions. Emotions create chemical reactions within the body – almost instantaneously. Chemicals are addictive. This is how we become addicted to our problems. The secret is learning how to feel a feeling without becoming it.
The Power of Anger
Here are the facts: You can’t avoid your anger or your unhappiness. If you try to suppress it, squash it, deny it, or run from it, it will still be with you wherever you go. You’ll bring your baggage into your next job, love affair, or exercise regime. The problem for most of us is that no one taught us what to do with our anger. We feel like a bottle of champagne: agitate us too much, and we’ll explode! Shamefully, we then jam back the cork and hope it all just simmers down on its own. But it never does. And never will. It can’t without a healthy expression. The solution is channeling our anger into jet fuel for our greatness. The fact is all great change came because someone got angry enough!
Why Women Struggle With Empowered Communication
Women, in particular, struggle with Empowered Communication. For thousands and thousands of years, women have been oppressed. Most of our mothers, grandmothers, and all our great-great-grandmothers were unable to vote, hold office, own property, speak out publicly, or have any rights over their own bodies. It has been only in the last few generations that women were even considered a “person” by law. Canada was the first country in North America to grant women the status of “person” in 1917; the United States followed in 1920. Prior to that, the word person referred only to men. We were possessions of our fathers, passed down to our husbands. We’ve been “groomed” for disempowerment for thousands of years. Feminism was not intended to cause the breakdown of the “American family,” even if it did. It was meant to give women their rights to become empowered . . . to expand their Emotional Edges! The same way men are able to!
The Woman Matters
So much has already been written about the Mother and the Child Archetypes, as well as Carl Jung’s the Father, the Wise Old Man, and the Hero – but what about the archetype of the Woman? Is there one? And if so, has it been around long enough to give our mind an immediate message that requires no further explanation the way Mother or Maiden does? And what about the rest of us – the wise twenty-, thirty-, forty-, fifty-, or even sixty-something-year-old woman? What about the Shero?
Facing Fear
When we operate in fear, we feel afraid to live fully and to show up in the world as the greatest expression of who we are. We may be afraid of others, afraid of their jealousy (we call it the “evil eye”), or afraid of their judgment, retribution, public attacks, even of being ostracized and unwanted. What if they hurt us because we stand out? What if people don’t like us and they say bad things about us? What if we get absolutely no support or encouragement from our friends and family and we feel even worse about ourselves – even less important?
It’s important thing remind yourself that fear serves a purpose: fear is intended to be a quick, instinctive shot of adrenaline to show you where you are contracting into a belief that isn’t true and to push you back up into a more empowered place – where you are negotiating, compromising, trusting, and expressing yourself at a higher, more expansive level.
One of the secrets to living with empowerment is facing your fear by giving it attention, kindness, and even love.
The Difference Between Aggressive and Assertive Communication
In every situation, there is an authentic (appropriate) and inauthentic (inappropriate) way to express oneself. Aggressive Communication is the inappropriate way. It manifests in defensiveness, irrational behavior, and the annihilation of relationships. Aggressive Communication shows up in any number of negative behaviors, from being self-righteous and judgmental to being difficult, demanding, defensive, suspicious, argumentative, condemning, indifferent, critical, unsympathetic, insensitive, cold, careless, or simply by showing reckless disregard for another person’s heart or well-being. Assertive Communication is the appropriate or authentic way to express anger. It empowers people to formulate anger in a productive way, allowing them the courage to see the bigger picture and to expand the level of consciousness, whereas aggression comes at the expense of all the other ideas in the room. This requires mindfulness and self-awareness. Best-selling author Crystal Andrus Morissette has a brilliant process for shifting people from aggressiveness to assertiveness.
Triggers - An Amazing Opportunity to Heal
The best way to explain a trigger is when someone says or does something that hits an “emotional nerve” within us – similar to touching a decayed tooth with the tine of a metal fork. It is a fear deeply embedded in our body and psyche. When someone can evoke extreme emotions within us – no matter if it’s your child, your parent, your partner, or a stranger on the street – this is called a trigger. A defensive or aggressive reaction occurs because they have triggered a neuro-association to past pain – a feeling we’d do anything to avoid, even if it means sabotaging ourselves. Best-selling author Crystal Andrus Morissette teaches that triggers are an amazing opportunity to heal our own unfinished business.
