Originally posted November 12, 2025 – Updated October 8, 2026 You can spend years learning how to love someone else, understanding what makes them tick, figuring out what upsets them, and adjusting how you communicate to make the relationship work. But how much time have you spent learning those same things about yourself? Do you know what makes you feel safe? What causes you to shut down? Why certain situations bring out reactions you don’t understand? Do you know what you need, what you want, and what happens when you repeatedly ignore those things? The longest relationship you’ll ever have is the one you have with yourself. Yet it’s often…
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Introduction: Why Do We Feel the Need to Respond to Everything? How do you respond to instances where you feel that you may have been disrespected, or overlooked? Sometimes triggering events, no matter how small – make us feel that we need to do something about it. Maybe someone took your seat after you got up, maybe you heard someone say something that upset you. Many times, we have this automatic pull to explain, or defend ourselves. We might feel the need to correct the other person, so we can ensure they have the right view of us. We may be triggered to prove ourselves. Yet, if we take just…
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Introduction: What If You Could Want Something Without Needing It? Have you ever wanted something so badly that it consumed you? Sometimes we can get caught up, and maybe even lose ourselves in things like a relationship, a job opportunity, or someone’s approval. We might find ourselves setting a goal, and then obsessing over that outcome; more specifically what we want that outcome to be. We may even become consumed by a version of our lives that we believe will finally make us happy, the idea of arriving. If you look back, you may notice that the more you wanted it, the more anxious you became. Oftentimes, the more pressure…
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The One Person You’re Always With Relationships require trust. Think about the people in your life that you trust the most. Why do you trust them? Usually it’s because of a combination of things. People who we view as trustworthy show up for us, they keep their word and they support us. These people make us feel safe, and they are consistent in our lives. Now, let’s turn that mirror on ourselves. Ask yourself: Do you offer yourself that same level of trust? Do you show up for yourself, rain or shine? Are you dedicated to your personal growth and happiness? The longest relationship you will ever have is the…
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When You Ask Everyone Else What to Do Have you ever asked so many people for advice that you ended up feeling further away from the answer than when you started? When I was growing up, I doubted myself quite a bit. Whenever it came to making a decision, or feeling at peace with a decision I had made – I would become anxious and fearful. Rather than taking a moment to pause and tune in with myself, I would immediately ask those around me for their opinion. I wanted to get validation for my actions from external sources, thinking maybe they knew something (about my situation) or that I…
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When Believing in Yourself Feels Hardest We’ve all been there – the wave of disappointment, bouts of uncertainty and the fear that comes with it, or even heartbreak that changed everything. Life throws a lot at us sometimes, and it’s not always easy. When I was in the thick of my healing journey, perhaps what some might call my “dark night of the soul,” I didn’t know which way was up. It felt like I was walking in a completely pitch-black room, and my steps would light up as I took them, no more, no less. This test called for a lot of self-trust and a strong belief in myself.…
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Sometimes it seems that we diagnose someone else as being insecure, as if it’s a jab. Under the right circumstances our ego might take the wheel and call that other person insecure – as if by comparison, self-doubt doesn’t apply to everyone. However, when we are the ones experiencing uncertainty, it’s easy to find reasons to feel worse and fall deeper into victim thinking. Let’s talk about where self-doubt come from, and how to build real self-esteem. Needing external validation is a learned thing, absorbed over years like secondhand smoke. And just like smoke, it clouds everything – how you see yourself, how you move through the world, and how you…
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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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Introduction: Looking Beneath the Surface I recently started a new job, and I really went into it with the idea that if I could have all of my questions and answers ready, I would be more prepared, more successful, and start doing really well right out of the gate. While I would soon realize that my expectations just needed to be managed with regard to time, I learned something here. Typically, it takes a long time for people to get started in my field, so I was actually on track as I was. As it happened, I wasn’t considering that a new hire is clearly going to be experiencing different…
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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…
