It’s happened again. Somebody you care about did a thing – an inconsiderate, unkind, irresponsible, or just plain stupid thing – and it has hurt your feelings. Or made you super mad. Or caused a whole bunch of confusing emotional chaos that you really didn’t want to deal with today. Fuuuuuuck! So. Given that reality,…
Tag: relationship advice
Escaping the Mire of Faux Feelings
Invalidated, unappreciated, disrespected, abandoned, unsupported, attacked, judged, invisible… any of these “feelings” tend to crop up for you? Do they come crashing in and wreck your mood, or your day, or your relationships? Invisible is a fan favorite of my inner kiddo, and, ooh boy, that one will fuck up my emotional tranquility real fast. …
Taking “No” for an Answer
For a single-syllable, two-letter word, “no” can get pretty complicated for a lot of us. Sometimes it’s easy, straightforward, and no big deal. Sometimes it’s heartbreaking. Sometimes the prospect of hearing it is so terrifying that we don’t even ask for what we need. Regardless of whether we struggle with people-pleasing, both giving and receiving…
Fighting the Hopelessness of Modern Dating
To all my single people out there, I feel you. Oh, lordy, do I feel you. Dating in the twenty-first century can feel entirely fucking impossible for so many reasons, and since hope isn’t a feeling (it’s something we have to create for ourselves), it’s pretty understandable that hopelessness creeps in when we’re trying to…
Permission to Change Your Mind
Decisiveness can be a useful character trait in a lot of situations. We’re each faced with hundreds of decisions on a daily basis, so being able to quickly sift through options and take action saves us a lot of time and energy. However, decisiveness can also hold us back from self care, gentleness, and listening…
Deciding People Mean Well
No matter how kind or compassionate or generous we may be, people are going to hurt us. That’s a reality of being in relation with other humans. People fuck up, and our feelings get hurt. We get angry. We sometimes retaliate, even when we don’t mean to. Everybody behaves like a jerk sometimes. Welcome to…
What Do You Actually Need?
Identifying needs is probably one of the hardest things to do. It requires checking in with yourself in a deep and mindful way, which is a process that most of us never really had modeled. Instead, we get told – by society, by our family of origin, by our inner critic – that our needs are “too…
Hearing It Once (Probably) Isn’t Enough
74 GB. That’s how much information, on average, our brain has to filter through on a daily basis. (Or did in 2017, when the article I got the stat from was published. It’s probably even more now). So, what’s actually surprising is that we somehow think that saying or hearing something once could ever be…
Settling Is Bullshit 