We all want to be accepted by the group, included, and made to feel like we matter. It’s part of our evolution; at one point not being accepted by the group meant you lost safety and would likely get eaten by something. Now, the consequences aren’t so dire, but we still want to be accepted. It seems like sometimes there’s almost an unspoken idea that the more liked you are, the more value you have. For those of us who learned to attune to others early, or learned connection through caretaking, being liked by the group may feel specifically important. We may expect approval as a necessity. Check out Stop…
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I’ve talked to a lot of people who would consider themselves ‘people-pleasers’. If you can relate, you might already know that it’s exhausting, lonely and never ending. People-pleasing is deeper than the desire for attention or approval, the desire to people-please is a message that there are parts of you that need to heal. For many of us, constantly tending to other people’s emotions, and keeping tabs on how they feel is a deeply ingrained survival mechanism. We learned this early on in life to stay safe, feel enough, or avoid rejection. More often than not, this pattern stems all the way back to childhood experiences of trauma and emotional…
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How do you normally react when someone tries to push your buttons? Do you immediately feel your heart rate increase and roll up your sleeves? Or, do you take a moment to pause, and think about how you would like to respond? What if you withdrew your energy altogether and chose to be unbothered? Today, we are going to discuss healthy detachment. You can think of this in action, as pulling your energy back from a person or situation. No big exit, no heads up – just quietly reclaiming your power. We’ll also talk about what happens on the other side of that energetic shift. Does the other person feel…
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The Opinions We Imagine Have you ever worried about what someone thinks? Have you ever been making plans, putting an outfit together, or even just looking at yourself in the mirror, and suddenly found yourself feeling self-conscious because you’re worried about what someone might think of you? So many of us base our decisions, our moods, and even how we feel about ourselves on what other people think about us. Before making decisions, we often think about what other people think. Sometimes those are opinions people have actually expressed to us, such as advice from a parent or expectations from a friend. But other times, we’re not responding to their…
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When Your Center Moves Back to You Eventually, there comes a point in our healing when we realize that the things happening outside of ourselves are much less important than what’s going on, on the inside. When we detach and begin focusing on our own well-being first, our center moves back to us. In my last post on healthy detachment – Healthy Detachment – What It Is (and What It Isn’t) – we explored what healthy detachment actually means and how it creates emotional space for what’s important to you. What’s interesting is what begins to change once you start putting that understanding into practice in real life. Your internal…
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The Moment You Realize You’re Waiting I overheard a conversation recently where two people were talking about someone, and referred to them as a “pick me girl.” They were talking about someone who seemingly goes out of their way to get attention and clearly makes her presence known. For some of us, people like that can be a little much, but I was curious to understand further. It got me thinking about the term “pick me girl.” To say someone is that type of person, we are essentially saying they are someone who raises their hand enthusiastically in hopes of being chosen – hence the term “pick me.” Why would…
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The Sting Isn’t the Whole Story We’ve all been there at some point in our lives. Maybe it was the phone call that never came. Perhaps you were waiting on an opportunity that fell through. Maybe you had your sights set on a new job that would have been perfect for you – but they decided to go in a different direction. Sometimes rejection looks as simple as a quiet shift in someone’s energy. We can assign meaning to things as subtle as a quick glance. That initial feeling of abandonment hurts. But what often hurts us more – and for a longer period of time – is how we…
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Why Rejection Feels So Personal When we think about rejection, we usually focus on the pain of the rejection itself. Some of us think of rejection as the sting of being told “no”, or not being included in the group. However, if you zoom out a little bit, there is more to it. Many folks respond differently to rejection, yet an underlying feeling for many of us is panic around the question, “What does this outcome mean to me?” It could be, that you actually aren’t as worried about being rejected as you are trying to stay connected to the outcome you were expecting. Check out Healthy Detachment – What…
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The Myth That Closure Comes From Resolution I think many of us are taught in some form or another that closure comes when we get justice. We’re taught that after there’s a resolution, an understanding, a conversation, or some type of acknowledgment – that’s when closure happens. That would be the justice version of closure that’s nice and complete. This version has a clear beginning and end point, and it happens when an injustice is later addressed. In real life, however, we don’t always get remedies. People oftentimes don’t acknowledge what they did, and at some point you realize you’re responsible for your own peace. Finding resolution doesn’t always arrive…
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The Myth of Closure When someone hurts us, we want an explanation. We want them to tell us why they did it, or how they feel. Sometimes, after an event, we get stuck trying to figure it out. We might spend hours ruminating, replaying conversations, and trying to pinpoint exactly the moment that things ‘went wrong’. It can feel like life is happening to us, rather than for us. What I’ve noticed is that the closure we’re looking for, that answer, that magic moment when everything suddenly becomes okay – it’s something you create for yourself. Closure is something you choose; closure is a boundary. You can want closure about…
