How well do you know your own needs? And how easy do you find it to communicate them with your Nearest-and-Dearest? More on that here. What is yours to do and what is for the other person? This is about being able to say, calmly, clearly and kindly: This is who I am, this is…
How do you communicate your emotional needs?
How well defined or communicated are your own emotional needs in your closest relationships? Oo-ohhh – can open, worms everywhere…(to quote a flamboyant old friend!). These past few musings have seen us exploring the world of boundaries: what they are and why we need them, understanding our own limits, and what gets in the way…
Knowing your limits
What do you know of your limits – emotional, physical, mental and spiritual? What is the necessary amount of space you need to function at your best and not collapse into a gibbering stressed heap or explode into a crazy raging person? How are you protecting that space with good boundaries? We learn much from…
How to say ‘no’ well
How easy do you find it to say no? And do you know how to say no well? Why is it so hard? (There are practical tips at the bottom of the post.) These are thorny questions indeed. We have been musing recently here on boundaries. The importance of knowing what it is that we…
Do you suffer from ‘hardening of the oughteries’?
Now there is a phrase that made me stop and do a mental double-take: ‘hardening of the oughteries‘. I first heard the term when it was used by a client in relation to herself. We are familiar with what happens in our blood vessels when they fur up from a poor diet, and we end…
When you say ‘yes’, what are you saying ‘no’ to?
What is the cost of saying yes, both tangible and intangible? In our voyage through the tricky waters of boundaries, saying yes to requests from others or to situations that arise when we actually would prefer to say no, is possibly one of the most difficult boundaries to maintain. If I say ‘yes’ to this,…
Boundaries are walls round what?
What is your understanding of boundaries, and how well established are your own boundaries? This is the start of a new mini series on boundaries. We hear chat of boundaries all the time in our modern lives, but what are they and how do we create them? And what are some of the issues around…
Making room for better not busy
What are you noticing about how busy you are this week? And what that feels like? What might making room for better rather than busy mean for you? Last time I was musing about what it looks like to let go of busy. This is not necessarily about making huge changes to our lives to…
The cost of courage
Where have you shown courage of late? And what has been the cost of courage for you? It takes courage to stand up for yourself or someone else in the face of opposition. Saying a bold ‘no’, or a faith-and-fear-filled ‘yes’ both take courage, and also require a counting of the cost. Much less glamorous but…
Would it make a good tattoo? Labelling yourself
What are you labelling yourself with this week? And should you be labelling yourself thus? These are the final two cognitive distortions that we will look at in this current series of musings: Labelling yourself and “should” statements. What we label ourselves with is linked to how we view ourselves and how we talk to…