Start Setting Boundaries With Others or Be Miserable.
Boundaries Make Us Happy, and Other People Miserable. This woman is learning to set boundaries. She’ll get pushback, but you have to accept that part of
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The Most Toxic Marriage Advice Ever Given: Ridiculously Misguided Relationship Phrases We Need to Stop Saying
My blood pressure rises whenever I hear this one, and yet it is one of the most common pieces of marriage and relationship advice out there, and it needs to go.
What a great idea in concept. In reality, it often pressures couples to reach a resolution before they’re emotionally ready to have a productive conversation. It also insinuates that you’re doing something wrong if you do go to bed angry. Nonsense.
Example: I am feeling very angry at my husband for flirting with a woman at a party right in front of me, and I am supposed to somehow bury those feelings before sleepy time? Are you kidding me?
Human nervous systems don’t work that way. Feelings don’t have an electrical switch you can turn off and on.
And for some people, some betrayal events are so enormously painful that if they wait to sleep until all of them are tied up in a bow, they will never get sleep.
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boundaries | Family issues | Growing, healing, trusting | Mental Health | relationships | self advocacy | Self care | Your Family & Friends
Adult Bullying Is Abuse: Why Bullies Do What They Do — and How to Stop Them.
Enforce Consequences — Every Time
This is the step people avoid — and the one bullies understand.
Consequences may include disengagement, documentation, formal complaints, legal action, blocking, or ending contact altogether.No debates. No over-explaining. No repeated chances.
Boundaries without consequences are suggestions.
Bullies stop when the cost of continuing exceeds the reward. Your job is not to change them. Your job is to protect yourself.
Bullying is abuse. It damages nervous systems, self-esteem, and trust. If you are affected by it, you are not weak. And you are not required to tolerate it.
Silence protects bullies.
Boundaries expose them. -
How to Complain to Your Partner Without Damaging Your Relationship.
People love to bitch, gripe, and complain, and most never learn how to do it in a way that can actually be heard. When I say heard, I mean delivered in a way that a partner can calmly and respectfully receive and respond to what is being said. It’s all in the timing, tone, and delivery of the message as to whether your words will be taken seriously and get the response you desire.
Surely all of us have experienced delivering a complaint in a way that got either zero response, an eyeroll, a laugh, repudiation, or a defensive diatribe that told us that getting anywhere with the person was not possible, at least in this moment. When people tell me they can’t communicate, this is what is happening, pure and simple.
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Most People Have Terrible Communication Skills and Dislike Those Who Don’t.
Not telling people the truth about who you are and what you want and need is one of the interpersonal and communication skills people get wrong, and I’m sick of it.
Trying to communicate with one of these Titans of Allusion and Vagueness is frustrating, and asking them for information is like squeezing the juice out of a log. Do they need help with M? Do they want to do X, Y, or B? Would they like to go to K? How do they feel about Z? Do they want G or V? Whatever happened with that thing they said they would do? Whatever answer they give, if they give you one, it may be disingenuous fluff and/or a deflection designed to get the attention off of them.
Their non-answer answers are gauged not to disappoint or upset, to avoid negative judgment and scrutiny, and to keep their actual views hidden, especially if they think you won’t like the answer. They are incapable of a healthy relationship and can only be surface friends with most and are deeply known or close friends with virtually no one — they usually allow their true feelings to be known to one or two unlucky ones who see the depth of their disappointments and resentments.
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Why I put grocery carts away and leave my skillet on the kitchen counter.
by Becky Whetstone, Ph.D. When I go to the grocery store I almost always see a shopping cart left in the middle…
