fine, just tired

Dear Reader,

Someone sits down across from me and I ask how they have been. Almost without thinking, they say they are fine, maybe a little tired. We move on, because that is what the answer is designed to do. It closes the question gently and lets us get to whatever comes next.

But sometimes, twenty minutes later, the fine starts to come apart. Though nothing in the room has changed, they have only stayed in one place long enough for the first answer to lose its grip. What was tired turns out to be closer to disappointment, or to a loneliness they hadn't made room to feel.

I think most of us believe we already know what we are feeling. We can answer the question quickly, and the speed of the answer feels like proof that we are paying attention. But the quick answer is usually a headline. The mind produces it to settle things, to give the feeling a shape we can carry without having to stop. And a headline, by design, leaves almost everything out.

Naming a feeling is easy, and most of us are good at it. We can have the word ready before we have really felt anything. Sometimes the word is even a way of stepping around the feeling, a tidy summary we hand ourselves so we don't have to stay with it. The harder thing is to leave it unnamed for a while, long enough to be surprised by what is actually there.

I do this too. I will tell myself I am frustrated when the truer word is hurt, because frustration is easier to stand inside. Frustration keeps me busy and a little above it all. Hurt asks me to slow down and admit that something reached me. The label I choose tends to protect me from the version of the feeling I would rather not have.

This week, when someone asks how you are, you do not have to answer differently. But you might notice the answer as you give it, and wonder, if it left anything out.

Yours in the journey,

Looking for more Moments? Intentional Moments Archive

I know this sounds stupid, but…

Dear Reader,

In the therapy room, people often begin with a small apology. "I know this probably sounds stupid, but..." Before they have even told us what happened, they have already decided how it should be heard.

Many of us talk to ourselves this way too. A feeling shows up and we immediately decide whether it is acceptable. We tell ourselves we shouldn't be this upset, or that we have no real reason to be. The deciding happens so fast we barely notice it. By the time we are aware of the feeling at all, it has already been told it doesn't belong.

Non-judgement can sound complicated, like something reserved for meditation retreats. Really, it is simple. It means letting an experience be what it is for a moment before deciding what it says about us. Noticing "I'm anxious today" and stopping there, without adding "and that's ridiculous."

That small difference matters more than it seems. When we judge a feeling right away, we stop being curious about it. There is nothing left to learn from something we have already dismissed. The feeling doesn't go anywhere, either. It just goes quiet, and keeps influencing us from somewhere we can't see.

In sessions, when someone stops apologizing and simply says what is true for them, their shoulders often drop. The feeling that seemed so unreasonable usually makes sense once it has room to explain itself. It came from somewhere, and it is often trying to tell us something. It becomes much easier to hear once we stop arguing with it for existing.

Maybe that is all non-judgement really is: a willingness to look at something honestly before deciding what it means. Most things, it turns out, can bear being seen.

Yours in the journey,

Looking for more Moments? Intentional Moments Archive

the unfinished

Dear Reader,

There are things we call undecided that we have already decided. We just haven't said so yet, and keeping them in the undecided category is how we avoid having to.

I've watched this happen in session more times than I can count. Someone describes a situation they've been sitting with for a long time such as a relationship that isn't working, or a job that stopped fitting years ago, and when I ask what they're waiting for, there's typically a pause that tells me everything.

They already know.

They knew before they walked in the door. What they're doing by keeping it in the "still figuring it out" category is buying themselves more time before they have to live with what they know.

I believe this is one of the more human things we do. A real decision has weight to it, and weight has consequences, and consequences mean that something actually changes. Keeping something open postpones all of that. It lets us stay in a middle place where the situation is still technically unresolved and so we are not yet responsible for resolving it.

This week, it might be worth asking whether anything you're calling unfinished is actually undecided, or whether you already know and are just waiting for a better moment to say so. There may not be a better moment. There's only this one, and the version of you that already has the answer.

Yours in the journey,

Looking for more Moments? Intentional Moments Archive

what you carry

Dear Reader,

Most of us carry more than we realize.

In therapy, this shows up in unexpected ways. Someone arrives describing a fatigue they can't explain, or an irritability that feels out of proportion to their week. As we slow down together, their reality begins to emerge. An apology they've been waiting on from someone unlikely to ever give it. The version of themselves they thought they'd be by now. The small piece of unfinished business that has been sitting somewhere in their chest since before the season changed. None of it was on their list of "problems," and yet each piece had been drawing from the same reservoir of energy they kept wondering why they couldn't replenish.

We rarely make a deliberate decision to pick these things up. Some of what we carry is genuinely ours and worth carrying. Some were handed to us before we knew how to decline. And some of it we no longer recognize as a weight at all, because we've been bracing against it long enough that the bracing has begun to feel like a normal posture.

Naming what we carry, even before we know what to do with it, can be its own quiet form of care.

This week, we are not inviting you to set anything down. That can come later, when there is more clarity. For now, the invitation is simply to take stock. To notice what is sitting in the chest, the conversation that hasn't quite ended, the worry that has been keeping you company, the expectation you've been measuring yourself against without quite knowing why. Let it surface without rushing to fix it.

You may find more than you expected, and that is okay. Some of what surfaces, you will want to keep carrying, and you can. Some of it will surprise you with how long it has been there. And occasionally, in the simple act of being named, something becomes a little lighter, even though nothing about your circumstances has changed.

Yours in the journey,

Looking for more Moments? Intentional Moments Archive

repair

Dear Reader,

Someone in session last week told me her husband had apologized for something months ago. "So why does it still feel unresolved?" she asked. I told her what I tell a lot of people. The apology had happened, but the repair hadn't happened yet.

An apology can be offered from across a room, or in a text, or even quietly to yourself. It ends with the words said. Repair is what happens after, when you return to the place where something cracked and begin the slow work of mending it.

In his decades of research with couples, John Gottman found that the ability to repair after conflict was one of the strongest predictors of whether a relationship would last. He called these small reaching-back moves "repair attempts." All relationships have conflict. What seems to change the outcome is what comes after.

Repair is often slower than we want. It’s asking, "Are we okay?" and being willing to hear that you're not.  We hope one good conversation will put things back together. Sometimes one is enough. More often it takes a series of small returns. You bring something up gently when you'd rather move on. You remember a detail they mentioned weeks ago and let them see that you remembered. The work happens in places small enough that you could miss them. Those are the places where trust actually comes back.

If something between you and someone you love is still cracked even after the apology happened, that doesn't mean it's broken for good. They might just be waiting for the repair work that comes next.

Yours in the journey,

Looking for more Moments? Intentional Moments Archive