when you generally feel invisible/unimportant in your day to day life & you meet someone who notices details about you & speaks on them as a way to flirt… that’s like kryptonite to a neglected person. it makes you feel loved when it’s simply them noticing details. not love. they notice your physical details & maybe mood shifts & speak on it & you feel cared about for bit.. but what about the switch up? what about when they stop noticing you. what about what it becomes just about them because it lowkey always was.

i’ve realized that some men don’t know how to be the man that you need because they’re still in the process of becoming the man that they need. they’re not even sure of the type of man that they’re trying to become. just that they’re trying to become one. this type of confusion around their identity & responsibility to themselves and others, bleeds into how they show up for you in a relationship. it can be a reason for their inconsistency.

You can have good intentions and still overstep someone’s boundaries. If they told you repeatedly not to do something that makes them uncomfortable (i.e. lend them money, buy them food, clean their room.) respect that. If they are asking for this behavior to stop and you continue to push forward, you are now doing what YOU want and believe is “right” for them and not only is it dismissive towards their feelings but it’s also invasive.

It takes a lot of emotional maturity to look objectively at someone’s actions toward you, even after they hurt your feelings, so that you can understand why it happened because you love them & refuse to villainize them because you understand that people are seldom real villains. Understand but don’t excuse. Forgive but don’t forget. You don’t have to villainize someone to set a boundary or to remove them from your life. It still takes emotional maturity to be like you know what? That sucked but I understand thats your trauma & it’s unsafe for me here bye

Science refers to the gut as the second brain. According to Harvard medical “Although it can’t compose poetry or solve equations, this extensive network uses the same chemicals and cells as the brain to help us digest and to alert the brain when something is amiss.” “Gut and brain are in constant communication.”
Intuition is “the power or faculty of attaining direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and interference. Immediate apprehension or cognition”.

Wait until you discover that just because they can intellectualize their emotions & verbalize their toxic behavioral pattern back to you & sound intelligent while doing so — doesn’t mean they have any intention of putting forth the effort to make sure they stop hurting people. I’ve had people literally apologize with their own damn near psych evaluation of themselves and go right back to what they were doing in terms of causing harm then when confronted, repeating that same self psych evaluation.

there are some people you can heal your trauma with and some people you just can’t. your trauma wounds can literally be incompatible with someone else’s. this looks like — consistently being triggered by their behavior or lack thereof. some people in your life have the ability to do more damage than good with their unprocessed trauma. two people with unhealed trauma can come together & provide support & safe space healing for each other — or simply be able to heal slowly while being involved, others cannot.

A question I like to ask myself when I’m upset is “is it my feelings or my ego that is hurt?” The answer makes how I plan to approach the situation a lot clearer for me. You’d be surprised how many times people say it’s their feelings that are hurt but it’s really their ego. It’s their belief about their self-concept or identity that feels threatened by some else’s actions or lack thereof.

I’m a visual learner — meaning I have to physically see the concept or theory played out in-front of me, in some capacity, in order to fully grasp what is being taught. I had no idea this visual learning translated to my own behavior outside of the classroom as well. In developmental psych, we often hear terms like “modeling behavior” for children. This means teaching them through action and not just words. Behavior could range from table manners, classroom manners, love languages and even communication styles.

if you are someone that needs a little extra reassurance from your friends or partner, i’ve found it really helps them when you are clear about why you need the reassurance and what you need it about. “i’m feeling insecure about…” “how do you feel about me or my ability to…” asking for reassurance can feel intimidating and make you feel overly needy but if your mind is not at ease and their feedback will help it ease, you have every right to ask. it’s a blessing when someone makes you feel safe enough to ask for reassurance.

self-sabotage is when a person’s behavior or lack thereof, creates problems in different areas of their life or interferes with their long term goals. now that we know what it is, why do we do it? there’s so many reasons that can contribute to why someone’s self-sabotages but today we’re going to unpack psychology todays list on why people sabotage relationships.

when someone hurts us, we want to understand the why behind their actions. that desire to understand may stem from how deeply we care about them or our desire to preserve the relationship but it’s also our need for control. if i can understand their reasoning and explain away… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… but another aspect of hurt that i wanted to expand upon today, is how hard it can be to trust again after a betrayal. whether it was an outward lie or a lie of omission. both things almost equally as deceptive. it can be so hard to trust that they had a lapse in judgment.

you are not your thoughts. dr. vilhauer explains that we are an observer of our thoughts at all times. they do not define us. our thoughts are ever changing and evolving through time based on our experiences, beliefs and values. give importance to your thoughts but not too much.… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… it’s up to me to discover that reason. it’s also up to me to sit with a thought and not act impulsively upon that thought because truthfully? tomorrow i may think and feel differently. our thoughts are malleable. they are able to be sifted through, discarded and changed based on… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

i’m thinking about how our trauma can dictate our compatibility with others but also our chemistry. if you were raised to be overly considerate of others and never yourself, you’ll sometimes find yourself with a person who is seldom considerate of others. the two of you can learn… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… if you grew up seeing your parents argue a lot, that might become your form of banter or even, a type of friction you’ll feel most comfortable with in your adult relationships. easily fixable fights might bring you comfort subconsciously.

i just find it sad that because you have been so used to not receiving softness from people... you've now reached a place where you think it's normal to accept harshness from others. you also think it's normal to reward their harshness with the softness you had to teach yourself. if you grew up in an environment where you knew your caregivers were not ever going to grow up or give you the softness you needed, you developed a thick skin towards harshness. for survival purposes.

i guess when people say they’re nonjudgmental what they mean is, they don’t go around screaming their opinions about other peoples lives from the mountaintops but we all have them. we all have inherent biases because that is part of the human condition of evolving as a person. as we grow through life, we observe other peoples behaviors and decide what we will and will not conform to. in those moments, judgements are made. whether our original judgements come from our own minds or the minds that our parents have brainwashed us to have is another story.

there’s an explanation as to why we remain far too long dead situations. sunk-cost fallacy is defined as the phenomenon where a person is reluctant to abandon a course of action because they have invested heavily in it, even when it’s clear that abandonment is more beneficial. we do this with relationships a lot, so i just wanted to remind you that regardless of your investment of time and energy with this person, you feel finished. therefore you are finished. growth is complicated and outgrowing someone is even more complicated.

you know how it makes you feel, you know it may not be the best situation for you but you struggle to remove yourself. you struggle to find the self control, self discipline or motivation to end the toxic cycle. that’s why therapy is so useful. your therapist can help reinforce to you once a week, how uncomfortable the situation truly is for you. having someone validate you weekly, hold space for you and also keep you from running away from that discomfort is why you inevitably end up making the change for yourself.

i don’t like the phrase “it sounds like you’re afraid of success”. it makes more sense to say “you’re afraid of what comes with success”. after you cross this finish line, there’s the unknown. the unknown could be, demands of consistency from you. demands of focus. just demands. obligations can be scary for individuals who struggle to focus or struggle to remain consistent due to the highs and lows of everyday life that they haven’t figured out how to maintain yet. the unknown is daunting for anyone but especially when you don’t believe in yourself.

i never realized it was my people pleasing qualities that was draining me in social situations. when you are hyper vigilant of everyone’s emotional state due to the inconsistent emotions you experienced from parents in childhood, you spend your socializing focused on others. this is where people pleasing comes from. it’s a trauma response that causes an individual to try to maintain (control) their environment (emotions of others around them) because they always felt it was their responsibility to do so.

i’ve been thinking about how often we confuse chemistry for compatibility. they might make you laugh & entertain you through good conversation but do they make you feel seen, heard & appreciated? are you both on the same page when it comes to communication or emotional maturity? i don’t think there’s any doubt that they feel something for you, they do & they may. i think what can be doubted about the connection is if they have the ability to nurture your emotional needs. your spirit. to ease your anxiety through transparent communication & expression.