Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by andresr, Courtesy of iStock Photo

A question that often comes up in therapy is this:

Is it necessary for me to go back through my history and drag everything up that ever happened to me? Can’t I just deal with the present and be done with it? Isn’t the past in the past?

My response is always the same.

The past is in the past unless it’s in your present.

If you’re still plagued by dysfunctional thought and behavior patterns, or emotional reactivity to triggers from your history, then you’ve carried these things into your present and they still exert control over you.

You can’t just think them away. You have to sift through them and pull them out by the roots.

How do I know if something’s been resolved or not?

There are several tip-offs:

1. You’re still emotionally reactive to events, experiences, or relationships you had that caused you pain or created dysfunction.
2. You’re unable to change behavior patterns you know are harmful to you.
3. These patterns prevent you from having healthy relationships, pursuing goals, or creating the life you want.

When you’ve successfully resolved something from your history, you can think of it without feeling bogged down or controlled by it. It’s an experience you’ve had, but it feels more like a distant chapter you’ve moved past and learned from. You’ve found a place for it.

But, when these patterns still persist in your present, you have to address them.

What all this means for you.

Let’s start with what it doesn’t mean.

It doesn’t mean that you need to crawl back into your history and review every event you can remember. That’s not necessary and isn’t productive.

What it does mean is that you can identify what still needs to be worked out by reviewing your present.

The issues that currently plague you likely have their roots in your history. By acknowledging these patterns and reviewing them, you can begin to unravel them and make changes in your present. Once you work them through, you can let them go because they no longer hold power over you.

Since we’re approaching a New Year, this is a great time to take a psychological inventory and focus on what needs your attention.

I would go at it this way.

Take some time to identify a single issue that’s keeping you stuck.

It’s good to start with just one. Pick the one that’s the loudest and causing you the most distress. Examples might be poor relationship choices, ineffective communication styles, self-destructive behaviors, inability to handle money, work performance problems, and so on.

Next, examine the issue with these questions.

1) How does it play out in my life right now?

Get specific about what it looks like. If it’s self-destructive behavior, what exactly do you do? When and under what circumstances? With whom? Be honest and don’t defend.

2) Where did it originate or come from?

Here’s where the past comes in. If you’re awful with money, is this something you learned growing up? Were your parents awful with money? What were the beliefs around it? In my family, most all my siblings have been terrible with money, as were our parents. We all just continued the same denial about overspending that we learned, and all got into debt. It took really looking at how this behavior developed to get on top of it.

3) What feelings or emotional reactions does this issue bring up?

Sometimes there are hidden hurts or pain that need to be felt, and by letting them come up, you can come to terms with them and eventually let them go. Suppressing them actually gives them more power.

4) What are the distorted beliefs that are driving the problem?

For example, if you feel insecure and not good enough much of the time, what beliefs about who you are did you learn growing up? These assumptions are usually quite distorted and require diligent correcting before changing how you feel in the present.

Now list the assets you have.

By assets, I mean emotional, psychological, and social assets. What patterns would you say are healthy and have helped you navigate your life? What are your strengths? Who’s in your corner? Who can you turn to or talk to that could help? In other words, what’s good, and what do you already have to help you meet these challenges?

Take action.

The last step is to come up with actions you can take to work on your selected issue and then decide how you’re going to do that. There are many possibilities such as reading up, taking online courses, engaging in therapy or seeking help from an expert, watching TED talks, or all of them. What’s important is to do something! Do what gives you a sense of momentum.

Things to watch out for.

Experiencing emotional triggers.

When you begin going through this exercise, you will naturally run through experiences in your mind from your history and, in the process, experience emotional reactions to them. That’s fine and necessary.

One caveat: This exercise is not meant to get mired in blaming family members, parents, bosses, or whoever is involved in your history. It’s to help you better understand who you are and how your history has helped shape you.

Recognize where you are right now.

Even though the past asserts itself in your present, you’re not still back there. You’re not that child who lived through those experiences. You’re an adult and what you feel now are memories, not your current reality.

You can review them and feel them, but you have the power to work them out and not be controlled by them. You can build on your good memories as well and feel some gratitude for experiences you had that have contributed to your assets.

Don’t fall “victim” to “victim consciousness.”

If you’ve had a particularly traumatic childhood, or have been victimized, you can get pulled into seeing yourself as a victim and holding on to that status as your current identity.

Your sense of self becomes someone who has and will be victimized to the exclusion of all else. This is dangerous and easy to fall into if your experiences were particularly painful. Always see yourself outside of “victim status.” It’s an experience you had, not a definition of who you are. That distinction is important.

Avoid being overly critical of yourself for current issues.

The habits and behaviors you learned and formulated were instilled in you at the early stages of your life when you were developing. For instance, your brain isn’t fully developed until you’re 25, so what you learned at the age of 10 was learned when you were in a highly developmental state of cognitive growth. The same goes for the development of your emotions, your sense of self and basic ego structure, and moral character.

When we’re developing, we adopt behavior patterns to adapt to the circumstances of our lives. You might develop the habit of hiding behaviors you’re afraid will bring on a harsh response from a parent, and you now find yourself hiding behaviors from your partner, even though the threat of abuse is not there.

This gets into something called the “emotional home.” It would be good to read this article while doing the exercises. It helps explain why some behavior patterns are so stubborn and difficult to overthrow.

A Last Thought

If you like to read, I have a list of books you might find helpful. You can find them on my website. They’re listed by category. If you don’t have time to read or don’t enjoy it, I would suggest TED talks. You can almost always find a TED talk provided by the authors of most psychology and personal development books. That’s a quick way to get the information you need and can use.

That’s all for today. Happy New Year!

All my best,

Barbara

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by Onzeg, Courtesy of iStock Photo

Last week I took you through the “thrive versus destroy” tendencies we all have to wrangle with, and I recommended a way to increase your awareness of where you are on that continuum by examining your daily activities. The purpose was to help you increase your “thrive” activities and decisions.

This week I want to piggyback on that conversation and talk to you about something called “regression in service of the ego.”

That’s a psychoanalytic term that has an involved explanation, but for our purposes today it simply means that sometimes we do things or get in moods that are regressive, but ultimately help us bump ourselves back up. For example:

Have you ever called in sick because you were overwhelmed or tired and needed a “mental health” day? And then you returned to work the next day more refreshed and better able to get things done.

Or you ate healthy all week, but on Saturday, you ate anything you wanted, some of which definitely wouldn’t pass the “good for you” food test, but the next day, you went back to your healthy diet.

Or you worked super hard all day and then plopped down in front of the TV to binge-watch shows that don’t require any thought.

In all these cases, you engaged in a small regression and then recouped and moved back to your good habits.

More importantly, by engaging in a little regression, you actually ended up bumping up your game and were more productive the next day.

But aren’t regressions always destructive?

Regressions would seem to fit into the “destructive activities” category, yes?

But done the right way, they aren’t. They’re respites for short periods that allow you to recuperate.

You take your foot off the gas pedal temporarily and slow down by doing something that doesn’t require any discipline or strain, or maybe treat yourself to something that’s off the usual list of “good activity,” like eating a big piece of chocolate cake with fudge icing! Then you get back on track.

That’s what “regression in service of the ego” means. You regress temporarily to help yourself regroup and then move forward again. The regrouping is an aid to the forward movement rather than a hindrance.

How is this type of regression different from destructive activities?

The regressions I just described were short-lived. They’re not habitual and don’t stretch out over a lot of time. You’re in and out.

Longer regressions are different. For example, if you

• Stayed home for five days instead of just one,
• Or binge-watched TV for days at a time instead of doing work that needed doing,
• Or ate fast food for one week and into another week and essentially abandoned your good eating habits . . .

. . . you would be doing something destructive.

These activities would not be “in service of the ego” but are slippages that can and often do result in a downward spiral.

They’re extended regressions that become destructive because their momentum increases the longer you stay in them. They sneakily shift from simple short respites to unhealthy habitual behaviors, and the more you do them, the more they pull you down. These are the destructive trends we talked about last week.

How do I make sure my regressions are good for me?

It’s tricky. The destructive drive is always looking for an entrance, and if you give it one, it’ll slide in and take hold.

The good thing is, you can always turn things around even when you’ve gotten way off track. Still, it’s good not to let things get out of hand in the first place. Here are some ideas to help you manage that.

1) Be deliberate in your decision to engage in a regression.

In other words, if you’re overwhelmed, and you decide you need a mental health day, then get clear on exactly what that means and what it looks like.

“I’m taking Tuesday off from work, but promise myself I’ll go back in on Wednesday and hit the ground running.”

Then take that day and allow yourself to totally immerse in whatever relaxes you. Don’t take the day and spend it feeling guilty or fretting all day about what’s going on at work. Be deliberate.

2) Get specific about what activities you’ll engage in during your regression.

Using our mental health day example again, what exactly are you going to do with your time? Are you going to read novels and lie around, watch TV, or take a walk? What relaxes you?

For some people cleaning out a closet and organizing stuff makes them feel better because it’s an activity with a beginning and an end and feels like an accomplishment. For others, it’s being passively entertained.

Decide ahead what you’ll do and set up for it. If you just want to wing it, do that, but make sure you don’t spend the whole day deciding what to do. That makes things worse.

Get clear, plan, and then give yourself permission to do what you’ve decided on.

3) Define the endpoint.

This is very important because, as we’ve already determined, regressions can open the door to that nasty destructive drive that’s looking for a way to slip in and take over. One mental health day. One piece of cake. One day off from exercise. Define it in time and quantity, and know exactly when it ends and when you’ll return to your normal activities.

The whole idea behind this type of regression is that it makes things better when you’re finished, not worse. The extra calories one day bumps your metabolism up. The extra rest away from work increases your engagement the next day. The day off from exercise gives your body a chance to recoup so your performance is easier when you return to it.

Progress is not a straight line upward.

Any kind of development or progress is five steps up and two steps back, and then five steps up again. It might be a different ratio like three to two or four to one, but always there is a back and forth. That’s because learning requires trial and error, failures and successes, and high energy followed by rest.

Regressions are one type of backward step. In our case, they’re calculated, short-term variations from the norm to help you take a step back and then start moving forward again with more vigor.

One important note here:

Regressions that are truly destructive should never be an option like indulging in an addictive habit, or wild spending that sets you back financially, or any type of impulsive behavior that has ongoing negative consequences for you.

The key is to choose wisely and allow for brief close-ended regressions that provide a needed respite to get you back on track or renew your dedication to your goals.

Final Note

Today’s blog is the last one for this year. Due to the holidays, I won’t be publishing a blog on December 27th, but I’ll be back to you in 2022 on January 3rd!

I wish you Happy Holidays!

All my best,

Barbara

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by mikkelwilliam, Courtesy of iStock Photo

Every day you make decisions about what you’re going to do that day.

The question is:

How aware are you of the impact of those decisions?

Likely a lot of what you do is just routine, which you probably do on autopilot, but there’s still an impact.

In fact, every action has an impact on your life, even non-actions. It’s all logged in, so to speak, and has an effect, even if it’s a small effect. These effects accumulate and eventually create trends. Then the trends build and gain momentum to guide your life in one direction or another.

The issue is:

If you aren’t aware of these trends as they formulate and gather energy, you don’t have control over where you’re going.

One way to get a handle on trends before they get out of hand is to examine your everyday actions. An easy and effective way to do this is by using the “two-drive meter.” Let me explain.

The Two Drives

We have two basic drives that enter into our decisions. These aren’t the only drives that influence us, but these do significantly impact how we make choices.

1. The first drive is to thrive. We want to flourish, reach, achieve, aspire, learn, become more enlightened, connect, and progress.
2. The second drive is to destroy. We sink, obstruct, become sluggish, laze, deny, ignore, disconnect, and opt out.

The first drive is a push toward growth, actualization, joy, and sometimes even transcendence.

The second drive is a descent toward pain, inertia, apathy, and ultimately ruin.

When you align yourself with the first drive, you make decisions and take actions that:

• Guard and increase your physical health
• Move you steadily toward worthy goals
• Help you attend to your relationships and engage in ways that deepen and support them
• Sharpen your conscience
• Reflect your best values
• Promote kindness, empathy, and compassion
• Help you stay connected
• Make use of your desire to learn
• Consider the consequences of your actions
• And if you have a spiritual belief system, honor and practice it

With the second drive, you’re more likely to:

• Avoid dealing with situations that need attention
• Withdraw
• Vegetate (stay in bed too much, binge watch TV, ignore work that needs to be done)
• Overeat, overdrink, overspend, overindulge
• Procrastinate
• Ignore relationship issues that are clamoring to be addressed
• Make decisions based on emotions without using your thinking
• Deny information that stares you in the face so you won’t have to deal with problems
• Be defensive
• Take shortcuts you know aren’t right or good for you
• Ignore the consequences of your actions

How to Use This

We’re all a mix of both drives, but it’s important to know how much and in what way. Here’s where the “two-drive meter” comes in.

Whenever you’re making a choice about something important or taking action, ask:

“Is this action (or thought, behavior, or decision) in my best interest, or is it destructive to me?”

The answers are not always so black and white – that’s all right. That’s to be expected. But usually, the answer is clear enough if you think about it.

To make this exercise more powerful, start by taking an inventory. Your goal in doing this is to see if you’re more in line with the first or the second drive.

The Inventory

Over the next week, observe what you do – not every activity, but most of them, especially those involving choices.

Create a document or hand-written list and set up two columns (or pages) entitled “Thrive Drive” and “Destroy Drive.”

As you go through each day, jot down your activities, including your thought trends, emotional reactions to situations, and interactions and responses to other people. Also, include what you do when you’re alone. Place each activity in the column that fits. Using our same question again, ask:

“Is this activity or decision helping me thrive, or is it destructive to me?”

If you’re not sure, put it in a “neutral” category for now.

Review

At the end of the week, schedule a review. Spend at least 30 minutes and more if needed, and delve a little deeper into your list. Look at each item and rank it in terms of importance. The more impact an activity has on your life (positive or negative), the higher it will rank.

Use the descriptions I gave you above in the first section to help you. For example,

For thrive activities, ask:

“What activities or decisions did I engage in that were positive and moved me toward my goals, health, aspirations, and connections? “

Did you eat healthy, exercise, get enough sleep, engage in empathetic interactions with those close to you, make progress on work goals, or solve problems that needed attention? What worked?

For destroy activities, ask:

“What activities or decisions did I engage in that held me back or contributed to regressing?”

Did you drink too much or eat mostly junk food? Cut back on sleep? Fight with people? Get on social media and rant? Did you ruminate a lot about other people’s problems and not attend to your own? What did you do that is moving you backward?

Estimate the Percentage

Now, as best you can gauge the percentage of each. Are you more on the thrive side or the destroy side? If it’s close, determine which side is at least 51% or greater. That’s your tipping point.

Be honest, because the whole point here is to see your general trend, not beat yourself up about it. You want to get an accurate picture of your place on the thrive-destroy continuum and identify activities and behavior you need to work on. You can then prioritize what needs attention most and begin working on one issue at a time.

Why This Helps

You might be thinking,

“Can’t I just make a list of things I need to work on and leave it at that?”

Yep, you could. But then you might “leave it at that” and go no further. I’ll bet you’ve already done that before. Me too.

When you make yourself categorize a daily habit or action as either life-supporting or life-dimming, it takes on a more compelling meaning. It provides some hard clarity that’s difficult to refute. It feels more urgent. It sinks in more.

And once you see it that way, you can’t un-see it. Even if you don’t change anything right away, the knowledge that you’re creating destructive trends stays with you and eventually helps move you toward taking action.

This is an exercise in awareness that’s more granular because it makes you look at those daily actions that are stacking up over time and creating trends, yet remain under your radar.

The “thrive-drive meter” is a more potent tool to help you recognize and get a handle on those daily decisions before they take hold. Give it a shot!

That’s all for today!

I hope you have a great week as always!

All my best,

Barbara

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by SIphotography, Courtesy of iStock Photo

Do you think your partner should be able to read your mind? After all, doesn’t he know you well enough to know what you’re thinking and feeling? Shouldn’t he know what you need?

Hmmm, this one’s not so easy to answer. It’s complicated. It’s a yes -and a no.

Let’s start with what mind-reading is and isn’t. Then maybe we can get clearer on what we should realistically expect.

What is mind-reading?

In a literal sense, mind-reading is a type of telepathy, meaning you can actually read someone’s mind. But that’s not how we use it. We use it more loosely to mean we can read someone’s thoughts and feelings without having them explicitly verbalized to us. In truth, we don’t really read each other’s minds, but we know enough about someone to correctly guess at what they’re thinking or feeling.

And herein lies the problem for couples. We make the assumption that mind-reading equates with love, interest, and caring.

“If you really know me and love me, then you know what I need, think, and feel.”

That’s a tall order, don’t you think?

It is, yet we still expect it. The question is why, and the answer is something more primal.

We want to be known.

Because humans are wired for connection, we want to be known and understood. This need arises early in life, likely in the womb, and continues to unfold during those first few years of life.

In the early months after birth, the infant doesn’t recognize her separateness from her mother. She’s like a magician who has a wish for something and it automatically appears. Abracadabra!!! She wields her magic wand and all her needs are met. She and Mama are one – baby needs something and Mama supplies it.

As baby moves toward the second year, she begins to recognize her separateness from Mama. She slowly realizes Mama is the real magic, and she seeks to connect to her through interaction, attention, love and nurturing.

As adults, we still seek that connection. It’s a much more sophisticated version of that early need and is accompanied by a full toolbox of emotional expressions and cognitive capacities, but the need remains the same:

We want to be seen, known, connected, and loved.

And nowhere are those needs more intensified than in romantic relationships.

The Problem

Here’s the problem:

When you enter into a committed romantic relationship, both you and your partner bring everything with you that’s accumulated in your psyches since birth.

Holy overwhelm! That’s a lot to navigate! And it makes mind-reading quite dangerous and often inaccurate.

By the time you enter into that relationship, and you’re anticipating that special connection you yearn for, you’ve developed a truckload of personal beliefs, behaviors, biases, needs for control and power, sensitivities to rejections . . . should I go on? All of that pours into that relationship. Both your’s and your partner’s.

Whoa! That makes it seem impossible for mind-reading to ever be accurate, but that’s not entirely true. Research has shown that it does improve for couples who:

• Are in long-term relationships.
• Have increased intimacy over time.
• And, who feel satisfied overall with their partner.

In a nutshell:

The more you know about each other through your experiences and conversations, and the closer you feel to each other, the more likely you are to be able to read what you each think and feel.

But wait . . .

Even in good relationships, mind-reading is very complex, and we unfortunately tend to expect it most when a relationship is under duress.

How often have you been in a conflict with your partner and thought something like,

“I shouldn’t have to tell you . . . you should know!”

To make it worse, sometimes you set your partner up to test him. You vaguely hint around at something, then lie in wait to see if he’ll get it.

“Do you really know me? Do you care? Let’s just see.

I’m being a little facetious here, but I know I’ve done things like this in my marriage and I’ll bet you have too. It’s normal.

Here’s a question to get a little insight into this whole thing:

Do you always know what you need, think, or feel?

I’m guessing your answer is no. So how much harder then is it for your partner to know?

Here’s a better practice.

Instead of waiting for your partner to read your mind, tell him what you need. The truth is, love is making it as easy as possible for your partner to know and understand you and vice versa. Try this:

1. Communicate clearly and directly your thoughts, feelings, and needs.
2. Reveal yourself. Don’t avoid, hold out, or manipulate. Be open and honest about who you are, what you want, and what you expect.
3. Be attentive and show interest. When you feel that your partner is truly interested in you – your well-being, your feelings, your desires, and your needs – you feel loved and connected, and you build trust.

John Gottman, who’s done extensive research on marriage and romantic relationships, has found that,

“Being attentive to your partner is the most important factor in determining whether a relationship will grow and last.”

He says that healthy couples are constantly involved in making and accepting “bids.” Bids are subtle or unsubtle requests to connect. They can be verbal or nonverbal.

For example, if your husband is sitting in his favorite chair after dinner and gives a big sigh, he’s putting out a bid. If you respond to it, you would ask, “What’s the matter? That was a big sigh.”

Bids can be as simple as a pat on the shoulder or as complex as a request to talk over a problem. Bids are invitations to connect, and the more couples offer bids and respond to them, the closer they are and the greater chance they have of a lasting relationship. Also, the easier they’re able to read each other’s thoughts and feelings.

Two Last Things

1) Don’t engage in or expect mind-reading during a conflict.

Studies have shown that we exaggerate, misread, and tend to see our partner’s reactions and responses more negatively during a dispute. We’re also more defensive.

2) If you think you’re accurately reading your partner’s mind, then test it by asking.

Don’t assume. Assumptions probably cause more problems than anyone ever considers. Your partner will appreciate being asked because it shows you’re interested and you care, which is, after all, the whole point behind mind-reading.

That wraps it up for today!

If you’d like to know more about “bids,” and how to use them, I’ve provided a link for a short video you can see on YouTube that was created by the Gottman Institute. Enjoy!

Hope you have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

_FOOTNOTES

_{Dunn, J. (2000). Mind-reading, emotion understanding, and relationships. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 24(2), 142-144. https://doi.org/10.1080/016502500383241}

_{Hinnekens, C., Sillars, A., Verhofstadt, L., & Ickes, W. (March 2020). Empathetic accuracy and cognitions during conflict: An in-depth analysis of understanding scores. Personal Relationships, 27(1) 102-131. DOI:10.1111/pere.12311}

_{Thomas, G, & Fletcher, G. (2003). Mind-reading accuracy in intimate relationships: Assessing the roles of the relationship, the target, and the judge. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85(6), 1079-1094. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.6.1079}

_{Ury, L. (2019, February 11). Want to improve your relationship? Start paying more attention to bids. The Gottman Institute. https://www.gottman.com/blog/want-to-improve-your-relationship-start-paying-more-attention-to-bids/}

_{Zafefka, H., & Bahul, K. (2021). Beliefs that contribute dissatisfaction in romantic relationships. The Family Journal: Counseling and Therapy for Couples and Families, 29(2), 13-160. https://doi.org/10.1177/1066480720956638}

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

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Photo by yamasan, Courtesy of iStock Photo

Let’s start today with a question:

Are you someone who follows through with what you say you will do?

If you promise to call someone back, do you do it? Or if you say you’ll catch up next week to make dinner plans, do you follow through? If you sign on to help someone with a project, are you there when they need you?

In other words, can people count on you, and do you keep your word once you’ve made a commitment?

If you’ve already got this down pat, then you’re good to go, and this blog may not pertain to you, but read on anyway to make sure.

It’s an important issue, and this is why:

Following through on what you promise means you care enough about the person or persons involved to ensure you don’t let them down. And that means you’re someone who can be relied upon, is considerate of others’ feelings, and feels a responsibility to do what you say you’ll do.

If you struggle with this and want to improve, the place to start is to identify what gets in your way.

What Gets in the Way

Any or all of these may apply to you.

• You’re a people pleaser, and your natural tendency is to say yes to whatever someone asks of you.
• You tend to say yes before thinking through whether you have the time or energy to do what you just promised.
• You haven’t established a method for remembering things you quickly promise. You say yes, and then it leaves your mind until someone reminds you again or nags you about it.
• You have a general tendency toward procrastination.

You might have something to add to this list, and if so, jot it down.

Now let’s talk about some things you can do with your new knowledge.

Get it in perspective.

Just because you struggle with this issue doesn’t mean you’re a terrible person, or you don’t care, or you don’t have good intentions. Most likely, you have great intentions, but unless you fix the problem, your intentions don’t matter. You have to recognize that it’s not okay, and do something about it.

You have to get very serious about it and come up with a well-thought-out plan.

Here’s what’s worked for me, and hopefully, it will work for you too.

1) Redefine people-pleasing.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to please others. What is problematic is the “why.” If you simply enjoy helping, giving, and making others happy, that’s great! Those are tendencies you don’t need to squash.

On the other hand, if you feel compelled to help because you don’t want someone to be mad or upset with you, that’s not so great. Guilt is not the right motivator.

Oldest or only children are more primed to have this issue because they were the go-to person in the family growing up when parents needed help with things.

As a child and adolescent, you may not have had the choice when it came to care-taking or helping, and you learned to people-please because it was expected of you.

What you need to realize is that as an adult you have choices about what you want to take on. There’s a lot you have to do, but promising things or agreeing to do things for family, friends, and even co-workers is something you have control over.

Make sure that what you promise is something you want to promise. Not only should it please someone else, but it should please you too.

2) Carefully choose your yeses.

It’s easy to say “yes” and often gratifying at the moment. It feels good to be a helper or pleaser – that is until later when you consider how much time or energy it will take to follow through.

To avoid this problem, use my 24-hour rule. For things that may take more effort or time, give yourself 24 hours to think through it before you say yes. Here’s what you can say when you’re asked or approached:

“I’d love to help you with that, but I need to make sure I can swing it. Let me get back to you tomorrow after I’ve gone over my calendar (or workload, or whatever you want to say), and let you know. I don’t want to make a promise I can’t keep.”

And then make a note wherever you will see it to get back to that person at a specific time the next day.

If you know for certain it’s a “no,” then say so right up front. And don’t feel bad about it.

The guideline here is:

Don’t take on things you don’t have time for and then resent having to do them or having people remind and nag you about them until they finally give up and decide you aren’t reliable.

And by all means, don’t say yes to things you really don’t want to do unless you feel it’s a necessity.

3) Create a system.

This is the one people most often leave out, and without it, you can’t get on top of the problem. I learned this the hard way.

When you say yes, it’s easy to forget what you’ve agreed to if you don’t have a way to track it. My go-to is to keep a daily to-do list in my “Notes” on my iPhone. I look at it every day multiple times, so whatever’s written there, I will see. When something’s finished, I delete it.

When you say yes to anything, even it’s just “I’ll call you tomorrow,” put it on your tracking list. If you don’t, you set yourself up to forget.

If it’s a more extended item like helping someone move three weekends away, still put it on that tracking list you have, and keep it there until you do it. You can also put it on a calendar if you use that.

However you do it, make sure you have a tracking system that you’ll see every day and that you’ll use. In short, the system is this:

1. Write it down.
2. Check it daily.
3. Assign a date and time to do it based on what you said you would do.
4. Follow through and do it.

That’s all there is to it. However, it won’t happen unless you’re serious about it and have decided you need to address it now.

The Benefits

The benefits of becoming a reliable person are awesome!

• People respect you.
• They see you as trustworthy and honorable.
• You feel better about yourself and see yourself as someone who keeps their word.
• You reduce your anxiety.
• Your attention is freed up for things you want to pursue because your mind is less cluttered.

And the best part is that it’s not that hard to do once you set up a system.

That’s all for today!

I hope you have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

PS – If you’d like to read a longer, more comprehensive article on this subject, click here!

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by Fokusiert, Courtesy of iStock Photo

Shame is one of those emotions that’s extremely uncomfortable. Imagine this scenario:

You’re sitting in a meeting, and your boss calls you out for being late on an assignment. You get that “deer in headlights” feeling. You can’t breathe, and you can feel your face burning as you blush. Your stomach drops, and you get a lump in your throat. All eyes are on you. You feel anxious and paralyzed simultaneously, and worst of all, you feel shame.

Have you had an experience like this? I have, and it’s awful.

When something like this happens, there are three reactions you can have. One helps you regroup and recover, and the other two draw you deeper in. I’ll go over those last two first, and then we’ll talk about the best way to handle it.

Response #1: Attack yourself to justify the shame.

In this case, you engage in a full-on attack of yourself. You assign your entire sense of worth to a single incident or specific characterization of who you are, and then sink into it. It’s a very all-or-nothing exercise in self-condemnation. The lower you go, the more shame you feel. In the case above, you might think to yourself:

“I’m totally irresponsible, unreliable, lazy, and inept. I probably deserve to be fired. I’m so stupid! I can’t do anything right!”

Response #2: Blame someone else to pass on the shame.

In this case, you get defensive and angry and try to justify yourself by ruminating about how you’ve been mistreated or are a victim of circumstances. Again in our scenario above, you might think:

“My boss is a jerk to embarrass me like that in front of everyone. He loves to have power and control! I didn’t have enough time to get that assignment done and he knows it, but he doesn’t like me, so he decided to call me out. Besides, I do great work! He’s lucky I haven’t quit already, but maybe I will!”

What’s Happening

In both cases, you’re playing hot potato and trying to move the emotions either deeper where you can get some leverage over them, or expel them outward and discharge them so you can disown them.

Sometimes we do both and ping-pong back and forth between self-blame and other-blame. One moment you blame the boss and ruminate about how he mistreated you, but then, you circle back around to yourself and think:

“Maybe he’s right, and it’s all me. I must be the problem!”

This is called the shame-blame circle, and it can be relentless and painful.

Why Shame Feels So Shattering

We treat shame like a hot potato because it shatters our sense of self.

At its core, shame is non-acceptance of who we are – or aren’t. Underneath the pile of emotions is a sense of unworthiness, inadequacy, and failure.

During moments of intense shame, we might have thoughts of wanting to disappear and not be. We feel like we shouldn’t exist. People say things like,

“I wish the Earth would just open up and swallow me.”

So what can we do to find some perspective that will help us through these moments?

Here’s the short-list.

1) When you feel it, acknowledge it and sit with it.

Don’t try to avoid it. Allow yourself to feel it and wait it out before reacting. After you’ve had some time to calm down, you can go back and review the situation you were in that led to the feeling.

2) Ask yourself if there’s something you need to repair, improve, or adjust.

Shame and guilt go hand in hand, especially when you’ve done something that caused someone else distress or upset. In these cases, it’s best to focus on repairing the situation rather than sinking into the shame.

Using our scenario, what could you do to make amends?

If the boss was right and you were late on your assignment, then you could complete it and take it to him, apologize for being late, and let him know what you plan to do to avoid being late in the future.

You might figure out a better way of tracking your work to be more timely, or if you’re overwhelmed and have too much on your plate, you might ask for a meeting with your boss to discuss what you can do to alleviate that problem.

In either case, you’re setting aside your feelings of shame to make amends, and by doing that, you’ll both feel better and repair the problem.

3) Take responsibility for your feelings regardless of how they were initiated.

Some people take pleasure in shaming others, which they do through condescension and dismissiveness.

When you’re around people like this, you might feel shame even if you didn’t do anything to bring attention to yourself. This is particularly true if you’re more sensitive to rejection or already have doubts about your worthiness.

Just keep in mind that no one can make you feel shame unless you accept their faulty view of you and take it in as your own. You have the power to reject projections that don’t belong to you and the power to accept who you are, imperfections and all.

4) Keep things in perspective.

One of the issues human beings have is a stubborn refusal to accept that things go wrong.

We all say we accept that things go wrong, and we even go so far as to say we expect it, but we don’t really. Underneath is that belief that things should be easy, we should be happy, and things should go right.

This is true even of the worst “scrooge.”

The antidote to this ingrained belief is to keep yourself flexible and approach stressful situations with a little humor and lightness. It’s like being a fielder in baseball not knowing where the ball’s going to go, but keeping your knees bent and your body loose so you can pivot in whatever direction you need to field it. Even then, you might make an error and have to run after it to retrieve it.

Fix what you need to fix, but wrap your emotional arms around yourself and say,

“I’m okay.”I can keep working and get better, but I’m okay.”

5) Be your authentic self.

Shame happens when you try to be someone you’re not, and then don’t succeed. When you accept who you are and make friends with yourself, you can handle making mistakes without beating yourself up. It’s very freeing!

It’s helpful to review your beliefs about who you are, what you value, and what your traits and personal characteristics look like. Check that list for validity. Are you parroting someone else’s “shoulds” you got growing up that don’t really ring true for you?

Make sure that you reflect what you know about yourself, and embrace that, warts and all.

You have the power to become more authentic and the power to prevent other people from defining you. Strive for excellence, yes, but your excellence, not someone else’s.

Authenticity is the most attractive human quality. That’s because it’s honest and trustworthy. What you see is what you get, and that’s relieving. It’s also accessible. Authentic people are easy to be around and connect with, whereas perfection is off-putting.

Last Thought

Since we’re coming up on Thanksgiving, you might think about who and what you’re grateful for, and be sure to include yourself in the mix.

I hope you have a wonderful holiday!

All my best,

Barbara

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by FluxFactory, Courtesy of iStock Photo

No one can escape having something bad happen at some time or other in their life. We live on a seesaw that can’t remain in one position. It goes up and down, and we go up and down with it. It’s just the way things are. The choice we have is in how we respond.

My favorite quote that speaks to this predicament comes from Dr. Seuss. He says:

“When something bad happens you have three choices. You can either let it define you, let it destroy you, or you can let it strengthen you.”

Obviously, the best choice is to let it strengthen you. But what exactly does that mean?

It might mean just plowing straight ahead and keeping yourself steady as you take action to make repairs. Or it might mean not falling into a victim mode and repeatedly replaying the lament “Why me?” It could also mean taking time out to extract something of value you can use to take your next steps in a meaningful way that lends greater purpose to your life.

All these could occur simultaneously, but the one I want to focus on today is the last one. The question is:

Even in the worst of events that disrupt your life and create emotional pain, what can you take from it that provides some added purpose to keep going?

Here are some examples of people who have done this very well.

The man who, as a child, was brutally beaten and experienced many broken bones and bruises at the hands of an abusive stepfather became a world-renowned surgeon that helps put people’s broken bodies back together after physical trauma.

The parent who lost a child in a school shooting took up the cause of gun control.

The victim of an accident became a paraplegic and went on to champion medical research in the area of paralysis.

In each of these cases, the events that were horrific and totally disruptive to each person’s life were used to refocus on a new purpose that would benefit others.

I would hope as I write this that nothing that traumatic happens to any of you, but we do all experience unexpected downturns or negative events that sometimes stop us in our tracks and make us re-evaluate our lives.

Here’s the silver lining I see in these events, and how to use them in a way that makes something good out of something bad.

New Insights Gained

When I was in my early 30s, I became ill. It was out of the blue, and at first, seemed like something that would go away in a couple of months. However, it dragged on and on and slowly receded over about five years. There was no treatment at the time, and most physicians I approached just passed it off as depression, even though I knew this was not the case. It disrupted my life. I was early in my career and I had to quit working, pack up my stuff, and move home with my parents.

It was hard – certainly – but it gave me a lot of time to think!

As I dealt with the physical reality and disruptive aspects of the experience, emotional insights sprung up that sharpened things which ultimately were very helpful. For starters, the whole experience humbled me. It made me have sympathy for people who are disabled – in a real way. It made me want to listen to people with an open mind and not put everyone in a diagnostic box, as my physicians had done with me. It gave me understanding and empathy for older people whose bodies betray them as they age. I understood pain in a way I hadn’t before, and I became a much better listener.

As it turns out, I had a bad case of the Epstein-Barr virus which at that time was barely on the medical radar. There’s a lot more known about it today.

Although I wouldn’t wish to go through that again, I’m grateful for those insights I gained because they’ve permanently and positively affected how I work with people. And, I may never have had them without this experience.

Need for Connection

Negative experiences are isolating. They bring your life to a halt and focus you inward. In contrast, the world just keeps going.

You go to the grocery store and everyone appears to be going about their lives as though everything’s all right, but for you, nothing is right. You’re in a different space, and no one else sees it. You feel apart.

These events sharpen the need for connection. You feel vulnerable.

If you have a partner, good friends, or family, you may find that you need them more right now. If you’ve been in a broken relationship for a long time, you may feel pushed to re-evaluate.

Being vulnerable can be the impetus for seeking greater intimacy and connection, and conversely evaluating and letting go of relationships that drain you or are destructive. Either way, our connections are a significant part of our lives, and setting them right sooner than later is a benefit of being forced to take a look at them.

Permanent Change in Habits

Learning in hindsight is better than not learning at all. Negative experiences can be wake-up calls, or they can provide awareness of changes you need to make but have ignored or put on the back burner.

In my case with the illness I had, I started studying nutrition with a vengeance. Ultimately, I changed my dietary and exercise habits forever. I quit smoking, started eating clean, and doing mild exercise as soon as possible. I have continued to tweak my diet and exercise routines over years to maintain my health.

Experiencing something life-changing that’s painful usually brings with it a desire to take preventative measures or carve new paths to help avoid similar experiences again.

Sharpening Your Focus on What’s Important

In the daily stress of life, we shrink down to the minutiae of everyday living. Over time, we spend less and less time thinking in big pictures, or focusing on higher aspirations, or being aware of the passing of time. We’re heavily in the habitual grind, which makes it difficult to keep an awareness of what’s most important to us.

An unexpected bad event pulls us right out of that for a time and makes us question where we are. It sharpens our awareness of time, and how much we have, and what we’re doing with it. It stops us and forces us to question why we’re here. What’s our purpose, and what do we need to do to move in that direction while we still have time?

It’s like doing that exercise where you ask yourself what you would do if you had only five years or three years or one year left to live?

• How would you spend your time?
• What would you try to accomplish?
• Who would you spend your time with?

Sometimes you might ask these questions without a push from some life-altering event, and if so, keep asking. But all too often we wait until we get that shove. Don’t wait. Ask it now.

And, when bad things happen, give yourself time to work through the initial pain, and then gather your insights and refocus on what’s most important to you.

That’s all for today. I’d love to hear about your experiences. Please leave a comment below.

I hope you have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by globalmoments, Courtesy of Stock Photo

We all have regrets. Most of the time, we can let them go and move on, but there are those sticky regrets that keep coming up and hold us hostage. These are the ones we need some help to resolve.

There are two versions of this kind of regret that seem particularly difficult to reconcile:

1. We caused harm to someone with our actions or behaved in a way that was destructive to either someone else or ourselves.
2. We passed up an opportunity that, in retrospect, feels like a wrong turn in our lives that we can’t go back and recoup.

In both cases, the feeling is unresolved pain and lament. We feel like there’s no way to recover, and in the case of the first one, no mercy or forgiveness.

Regrets keep us in the past and inhibit our engagement in the present.

It helps to look at how we perpetuate this and, using that knowledge, how we can change that trajectory and make use of our regrets rather than let them hold us back.

Let’s start with the narratives we create.

Our Repetitive Narratives

Regrets continue to have life because we create repetitive narratives that confirm our stories about what happened and how we feel about it. Maybe you cheated on your spouse and lost your marriage, or you did something on the job that derailed your career. You might have always wanted to be a physician but instead got pregnant in your late teens and had to give up going to college.

Regrets stay alive because we repeat the stories in our heads. We elaborate and exaggerate. We spend a lot of time blaming ourselves or others or circumstances for why we feel the way we do now. Often we pile on self-loathing or self-hatred.

The Idealized Self

At the foundation level of our narratives is our attachment to an idealized view of who we are and who we should be. We all have an ego-ideal which is our composite concept of a good and worthy human being.

When we use our ego-ideal in a healthy way, we see it as something to strive for, and we take pleasure in working at it through a process of successes and failures and learned lessons.

When we use it in an unhealthy way, we hold ourselves to a perfect image and regret any deviations or mistakes along the way.

Regrets represent our resistance to the necessity of learning through errors and experiences of failure. We’re not perfect. Life is about growth and learning – not arriving.

We’re always a work in progress.

We are, by nature, developmental. This is a fundamental concept because it elucidates the ever-changing capacities we have as we age.

Your teen self doesn’t have the maturity and know-how that your 40-year-old self has, and your 40-year old self doesn’t have the emotional wisdom and appreciation of life’s gifts that your 70-year old self has.

This means it’s futile to beat yourself up for things you thought and did at earlier stages of development. You might wish you had made different choices, but regretting them by heaping on self-criticism and hatred or punishment just keeps you there.

You have to accept and embrace the reality that life is evolutionary and requires constant learning and adjustments as we move forward. It’s impossible to avoid making mistakes, and regrets are part of that, but they also present the opportunity to learn the lessons offered.

So this brings us to the third problem.

Avoidance of Engagement in the Present

As long as you keep yourself focused on past mistakes, you avoid fully engaging in the present. You become a victim of your narratives and wittingly or unwittingly tell yourself you can’t be happy, can’t move on, can’t succeed, and can’t get over what happened before.

Part of the problem is that you think that if you let go, you’re absolving yourself of guilt. If the regret is about someone you hurt, you feel you’re forgetting what you did and forgetting the pain you caused.

If you passed up an opportunity, you think you’re letting go of a dream that’s been a central part of your self-image, and therefore you’re caving to failure and accepting you’ll never be who you wanted to be.

The problem is that you can’t make use of opportunities you have now, or fully engage in relationships now, or live up to the responsibilities you have now if you’re living in your past narrative.

Here’s what you can do.

Consider your developmental age.

Recognize that you’re wiser now than you were then, and make use of what you’ve learned. Take the time to admit, review, and evaluate your mistake, and recognize the lesson or lessons learned. What can you take forward?

Forgive yourself.

This is the most important one. Forgiveness is a form of humility. It’s an acceptance that you aren’t perfect and will and do make mistakes. Here are some things you might try:

1. If the regret has to do with harm you caused someone, then make amends. Do it in person if you can, and if not, then in your mind. Write it out, and tell them how sorry you are and why. As you write, visualize that person listening to you. Sometimes it helps to get a journal or notebook and keep your notes.
2. If the regret is related to a missed opportunity, re-evaluate where you are right now and look at the positives of where you landed. What did you gain by taking a different direction? What have you learned? I wanted to study music in college but ended up doing something entirely different because circumstances presented themselves in such a way that prevented the direction I had in mind. In retrospect, it was the right path and has allowed me to do work I had not previously known I would love.

Move on.

Once you truly forgive yourself, then it’s time to move on. Take stock of where you are and where you’d like to go.

• How can you fully engage in your life?
• What are your responsibilities, and what can you do to meet them?
• What changes would you like to make?

The best way to absolve guilt is to repair and do better. That’s all we can do. We aren’t gods. We’re fallible human beings, but fortunately, one of our greatest capacities is to learn from mistakes. That’s where we should leave our regrets.

Have a wonderful week!

All my best,

Barbara

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by fizkes, Courtesy of iStock Photo

Overwhelm is such an uncomfortable state of mind. No one likes it, and why would they? It’s painful!

More importantly, it can seem impossible to lift yourself out of it and get moving again.

Two feeling states usually accompany overwhelm. You might feel one or the other or fluctuate back and forth between the two. They are:

1. Agitated paralysis. You feel like you can’t move. You might sit and stare into space yet feel restless at the same time. Sometimes people go to sleep to escape or binge-watch TV or engage in anything that moves them away from that state of agitated limbo.
2. Anxiety. In this case, you’re actively anxious. You can’t sit still, can’t focus on anything, your mind races, and your thoughts tumble over each other. You catastrophize, thinking far into the future about the demise of your life or your goals or your relationships. It’s dark.

So what do you do to get out of this?

You can’t think your way out.

Overwhelm originates in your mind, so trying to use your mind to get you out of it usually fails. There’s too much mental static in the way.

You have to distract yourself with something that focuses you and break up the paralysis. I want to share my favorite strategy with you because it’s usually quite effective. I’ve used it many times myself, as have my clients, with success.

Here’s how you do it:

1. Select three small, doable tasks. These can be as simple as folding one load of laundry, making one phone call, returning one email, making your bed – whatever seems super easy and won’t take more than 10 or 15 minutes.
2. Write these three tasks on three separate pieces of paper. Just take one sheet and cut or tear it into three parts, or you can use index cards if you have them.
3. Pick one and put that piece of paper face up in front of you. Put the other two face down somewhere else, like on your desk or kitchen counter.
4. Make yourself do that one thing. It doesn’t matter if you feel like it or not. You don’t have to be energized by it or care all that much about it. You just have to do it.
5. Then repeat this process with the next two.

Once you’ve completed all three, you should feel some shift in your mood. You probably won’t feel like jumping up and down with joy yet, but there should be a tiny beam of light coming into focus.

Take that emotional energy and create a new list of three more tasks to do. Make this list right now, even if you don’t intend to do them until tomorrow. Having the list ready will set you up for success the next day. And again, put each task on a separate piece of paper or index card.

Now reward yourself with something that soothes you and is enjoyable. Maybe it’s having a good dinner or watching your favorite TV show or visiting with a friend. It should be something small but satisfying, and something not self-destructive like drinking a bottle of wine.

Let yourself feel good about the three things you accomplished, and don’t allow your mind to go back to frenetic catastrophizing.

You CAN get everything you need to accomplish done by doing only one thing at a time and not looking ahead more than three tasks into the future.

The effects of working this way are:

• You begin to whittle down your gigantic to-do list.
• You gain momentum, and things seem more manageable.
• Your mood shifts.
• You break up your paralysis.

“Okay, that’s great. I’m out of my current state of overwhelm, but how can I apply this to more challenging tasks?”

Let’s check that out.

What’s next?

Next is to take what you’ve learned and use it to tackle bigger things.

The three essential lessons are:

1. Taking action rather than thinking about taking action creates momentum.
2. Doing minimal tasks that take little time and effort is the best way to start.
3. Doing one thing at a time and blocking everything else out increases your success rate.

Using these ideas, you can approach your more complex tasks without getting overwhelmed. The key is to:

Break everything down into the smallest, most doable units of work so that you don’t resist doing it.

There are three methods you can use.

1) You can work on a time basis.

This means working for specific amounts of time as opposed to working by the task.

There’s a technique that uses this strategy called the Pomodoro Technique. You choose a task, figure out the total time it will take, and then begin doing it by working in 25 minute periods. Work 25 minutes – take a 5-minute break – work 25 minutes – take a 5-minute break – and so on until you’ve completed four total sessions or 2 hours. Then take a 30-minute break before starting again or doing something else.

This is helpful for tasks you want to stay focused on until finished.

You can also choose a specific amount of time to work and complete it without adding a second. For example, you might decide to write for 30 minutes today and 30 tomorrow. In this case, time is the primary measure – not the task.

2) You can work on a task basis.

You create a list of tasks and make them small enough not to seem overwhelming. Using the same method we used above – write each task on a single piece of paper and finish doing one before viewing the next one.

You can do this daily, which I recommend because your task list stays on the smaller side, and you can also do it weekly yet still only focus on one day at a time.

Keeping a long list in front of you at all times has the effect of crowding your mind and overwhelming you.

Some people like to put a large whiteboard on the wall and list everything that needs to be done for the next 6 months to a year. This can be extremely overwhelming. You can make that long list, but keep it tucked away and only pull it out when you need to add to your daily or weekly list.

3) The hybrid.

This method combines the use of time and tasks. Schedule a time block, and list what you think you can accomplish in that time. This limits your time consumption which is helpful because you know you’ll only be working for a specific amount of time. But it also keeps you focused on the tasks you prioritize as most important. Just remember to break your tasks down into their smallest components.

How do you choose?

You’ll know what works best by staying aware of when you begin to feel overwhelmed. When that happens, drop back to smaller lists, smaller time segments, and smaller tasks.

That’ll do it for today. I hope you have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara

Welcome to Monday Blog Shorts – ideas to make even Monday a good day! Every Monday, I share a short article with you about a strategy you can use, or new facts or info that informs you, or a new idea that inspires you. My wish is to give you something to think about in the week ahead. Let’s dig in!

Photo by dragana991, Courtesy of iStock Photos

Have you had a relationship with someone that regularly takes advantage of you, demands or cajoles you into giving and giving and giving, and gives little to nothing back? People who do this drain you. They’ll take everything you’ve got and still be discontent and complain. They want more.

The problem is they’re never satisfied.

If you meet their demands, they might temporarily seem content, but in no time, they create a new situation that requires another outpouring of attention and care. There’s no end.

Unfortunately, these situations occur most in close relationships. Spouses, adult children, parents, or close friends are the most likely culprits of this kind of behavior.

So what do you do if you find yourself in this place?

There are two parts to this:

1. Recognize and confirm for yourself that this is happening.
2. Apply boundaries to see if the relationship is viable, or decide if you need to leave.

Let’s go through them both.

Raise your awareness of what’s happening.

One of the difficulties of being in relationships like this is that you become enclosed and cut off. By that, I mean that you spend most of your time reckoning with the other person’s demands and diminish your access to other people.

The effects of this are that you find yourself questioning your perceptions. You make excuses for the other person. Or maybe you chastise yourself and think you aren’t giving enough. You may go back and forth between feeling guilty and being resentful and angry.

Most people who take advantage in this way know all of this and cash in on it. As long as you feel a sense of responsibility and guilt, the behavior continues.

Ask these questions to help clarify what you likely already know:

• What do I get from this person that’s of value to me?
• Is this person concerned about my well-being, my feelings, or my needs?
• Does this person check in with me about how I’m doing?
• Do they get angry, or pout, or manipulate if I’m not meeting every demand?
• Would this person ever take care of me the way I’m taking care of them?
• Do they make real efforts to take care of their own needs?
• Do they sabotage themselves (and you) by not taking responsibility for themselves?

In a good relationship, there is reciprocity of concern, and both people have respect for the other and care about the other’s well-being.

Sometimes, one person needs more temporarily, but always the pendulum swings back the other way. You trust that give and take will always be there because you each value the other’s happiness.

With people who drain you, there’s no give and take. They’ll drain you dry and ask for more and make you feel guilty if you can’t find more to give. They’re heavily dependent.

It’s crucial as a first step to truly see what’s going on and know that you’re being taken advantage of, used, and likely manipulated. If you don’t get clear on this, you’ll fall back into feeling guilty and continue on.

It helps to talk to someone you trust who can be objective. A friend is fine if they’re able to let you speak without overriding your feelings with their own. A therapist is always a good option.

Now for the second part.

Do I stay or leave?

There are two things you can do.

1. The first one is to begin setting boundaries.
2. The second is to make a decision to leave the relationship.

Let’s start with boundaries.

Setting Boundaries

You may feel that you can’t leave the relationship. For instance, if the problem exists with an adult child, you will likely feel very uncomfortable cutting the relationship off. You may even feel that way with a spouse or other family member.

In this case, setting boundaries is the best option. You want to see if you can salvage the relationship. Sometimes a needy person will change their behavior to avoid the loss.

I would suggest getting a journal for this so you can write out your thoughts and ideas. Start by getting very clear on:

• What expectations of you are unreasonable?
• What behaviors on the other person’s part are contributing to the problem and could be changed if they were willing?
• What behaviors on your part are contributing to the problem?
• If you could change the relationship to reflect mutual respect and concern, what would that look like? Get very specific. What would it take for you to feel comfortable and “good” in this relationship

Once you have a handle on all of that, have a frank conversation with this person. Calmly spell out your feelings and thoughts about what changes you need to see made and why. Describe in detail what expectations you have in terms of new behaviors and cooperative efforts on both your parts.

Don’t blame or accuse.

Use “I” statements only and speak of what you need and what you won’t allow. If the relationship is viable, the other person will respect what you have to say even if they don’t agree right away. Some people say no before they say yes, and that’s all right as long as the changes come along.

For you, the hard part is to hold the line. You’re battling patterns that have become institutionalized in your relationship and likely come from your history. A good outcome will include negotiation and consideration on both your parts as you seek to make real changes. Again, I would suggest some counseling to help you work through the process.

Leaving the Relationship

Most of the time, we try to salvage the relationship before deciding to leave it. Occasionally, you’re already there and don’t need to think about it, or something happens that pushes you to that point, and you make the decision to leave.

Some relationships are much easier to leave. For example, if you have a friend who has been the taker in the relationship for a long time without giving you much back, you might more easily decide to stop interacting or spending time with this person.

A marriage or family relationship is different and takes more thought. These are harder to navigate, and if you’re struggling, you really should seek some counseling.

Things To Remember

Here are several things to keep in mind that might help:

1. Real love is holding those dear to you accountable for their behavior.
2. Self-respect comes from setting boundaries with others against manipulation, being used, or being abused.
3. Relationships that last are characterized by mutual respect and concern for each other’s well-being. It can’t be a one-way street.
4. Everyone is ultimately responsible for themselves. It’s up to each of us to do all within our power to take care of ourselves and to consider the feelings and needs of those we love.

That’s all for today. I hope you have a great week!

All my best,

Barbara