#263 – What role do you feel trapped in?Like any system, families have parts. In relationships, we refer to parts as "roles."Some roles are "outer" (father, older sibling, cook, handy-person), and some are "inner" (caregiver, trouble-maker, peace-kee...
#262 – What made you take ownership for random mishaps?Internalizers seek within to find what went wrong – externalizers blame the world. Which are you?Some time back, my husband proposed a thought exercise to understand more about my son's case. Sta...
#261 – When will the need to 'be right' trip you up?Who am I to decide what's right and what's wrong, anyway?On Sunday, coming back from my retail job, I found myself typing a long, detailed email to my supervisors. I was irritated because they'd tur...
#260 – How can radical respect improve your life?Speaking with my son yesterday, I said I didn't know what could make the prosecutor change his mind about the evidence, so he'd look at it with attention.My son responded, "he only needs to treat...
#259 – How did your Ghosts enter your mind?The Ghosts and the Ego are self-protective mechanisms we develop in childhood. We do it because, when we're little, the outside world is incomprehensible. To make sense of the apparent chaos, we turn to ours...
#258 – Did you believe the truth was obvious?I did. Perhaps naively, I assumed that the truth was one for everyone and that it presented itself without question.I believed that people of the law (namely judges and prosecutors) were immune to the...
#257 – How can you deal with toxic people?Just kidding. Responding to this question would counter everything I've shared with you so far.Why? Two main reasons.One: if someone is or isn't toxic or not is NOT your problem, so there's nothing for you to...
#256 – What does you True Self aspire to?I thought I wanted a writing job. Now that I have one, it doesn't feel as desirable as it did before.Not because I no longer love to write – I do. But because this job feels like I'm in a writing sweatshop. I...
#255 – Power – what's the dangerous kind?Power: some want it, some eschew it. But we all need it in some degree. Without power, we can't function, either as individuals or as a collective.Power gives us the ability to act and be, and sometimes t...
#254 – Do inter-personal boundaries make you uncomfortable?When you equate attention with love, boundaries feel like an attack.Yesterday, exploring how setting my personal boundaries made me feel, I thought about my father. Whenever he found me "in m...