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 Strange Fear of Letting Go Overthinking is the worst. It takes up your time and valuable space in your mind. Sometimes we get in our heads over the most insignificant thing – and it can run away with us. What if something bad happens? What if this happens? What if that happens? If we struggle with worry and overthinking, we often resort to the worst-case scenario almost instantly. Maybe for some of us, we ruminate for days or more on the same subject. We might think about every possible outcome until we’re sure we’ve thought of everything. Being in worry makes us feel like we’re doing something. Sometimes worrying…
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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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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…
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Why Do I Overreact to Everything? Emotional regulation isn’t just “keeping calm, and carrying on”. It’s noticing how you are feeling, and navigating your way through those emotions intentionally. Have you ever caught yourself thinking, Why do I overreact to everything? Or wondering why, when things pile up, you either shut down completely or feel like your emotions are suddenly way bigger than the moment calls for? Maybe you’ve asked yourself how to stay calm when you’re triggered, or why small things seem to set you off even when you’re doing “all the right work.” Or maybe the question is simpler than all of that: Why do I feel so…
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Inner Knowing as an Innate Relationship How do you feel about your own judgment? Do you trust yourself to make decisions based on your values and alignment? How do you weigh that decision? If you’re anything like me, you started this journey with no idea what you were doing. It’s okay – we are all doing our best. We try to live our lives in a way that we feel is acceptable. We use our best judgment and hope for the best – but when did “hoping for the best” become good enough? Whatever happened to our own inner sense of knowing, and having that be good enough? You were…
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Self-Trust Isn’t Built From Certainty Self-trust is one of those qualities we might think we don’t need to have. I remember when I first started doing affirmations, one of the things I wrote down – hoping that one day I would actually mean it – was I trust myself. I wanted that to be true, but I didn’t really know what it meant. We often believe that if we want to trust ourselves more, we need to feel more certain first. Maybe we need to be more confident in how we carry ourselves, or clearer in our decisions, or more grounded in our interactions with others – then we’ll have…
