The Overwhelmed Brain

Emotional Intelligence for Critical Thinkers

The Silent Treatment – How Emotional Withdrawal Dissolves Love

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We’ve all done it. At one time or another, you’ve emotionally withdrawn from someone who set off some sort of emotional trigger in you.

The Silent Treatment is a protection mechanism that kicks in when you feel hurt, unsafe, or triggered in some way. When someone does or says something that betrays your values, morals, or beliefs, you may withdraw and put on your “emotional armor.”

Some information may be so hard to accept or understand that you just want to slip back into your shell so that you can process it and figure out what to do next.

Important: If you believe that you may be doing emotionally abusive behavior and would like to change that about yourself, sign up for the life-changing Healed Being program over at healedbeing.com).

If you are currently in a relationship with someone who uses the silent treatment to make you feel guilty or sad, listen to my podcast Love and Abuse to help you navigate through the difficulties.

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How to Deal with Highly Defensive People

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defensive people

Highly defensive people are very sensitive to certain subjects causing them to go into a sort of fight or flight response. After all, why jump into a defensive posture unless you think there’s a threat? 

The threat is typically not realistic, but that’s only an outsider’s perspective because to the person with the defensive behavior, the threat could be very real to them. But what exactly are they threatened by?

I received a letter from a listener that was dealing with a defensive person at work. Her coworker would get very defensive whenever anyone would talk about “controversial subjects” around her. The letter writer didn’t tell me exactly which controversial subjects were being discussed, but I could only assume that they were the typical ones that most people have a very staunch opinion on. 

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The Process of Self-Sabotage – You Don’t Have to Forgive Everyone – Anxiety All The Time

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The Process of Self-Sabotage – You don’t have to forgive everyone – Anxiety all the time
The Process of Self-Sabotage – You don’t have to forgive everyone – Anxiety all the time
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The Process of Self-Sabotage – You don’t have to forgive everyone – Anxiety all the time
May 1, 2016

Why do we fall off course so easily? When you prioritize tasks that take your time away from the things you want to accomplish, you fall back farther and farther until you are no longer making progress. In fact, you might even end up going backward.

Sometimes you are not in alignment with a bigger vision for yourself. The reason is that you might actually have a value hidden under the surface that you didn’t even know was there. I talk about this self-sabotaging behavior in segment one of this episode.

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Eliminating Negative Memories – The Yin Yang of Masculine and Feminine – Emotional Detachment

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Eliminating Negative Memories, the Yin Yang of Masculine and Feminine, and Emotional Detachment
Eliminating Negative Memories, the Yin Yang of Masculine and Feminine, and Emotional Detachment
Episode play icon
Eliminating Negative Memories, the Yin Yang of Masculine and Feminine, and Emotional Detachment
November 8, 2015

Segment one: Our emotions are attached to our memories. Our memories are attached to people and stuff. It’s that stuff that we hold on to that sometimes makes us feel bad, so why do we still have it in our lives? Pictures are a great example of this. Why keep pictures that make you feel bad?

Segment two: In any relationship, the role of masculine is typically played by one person and the role of the feminine is played by the other. The problem occurs when one person likes the role they’re in and the other doesn’t. Knowing your role and what best works for the relationship will create a harmonious get-together as opposed to one of conflict.

Segment three: In this final segment, I talk a bit about detaching from your emotions. Being emotionally detached can make your partner think that you don’t love them which can be one of the worst feelings in the world.

Stop anxiety when it starts with The S.A.F.E. Empowerment System

Reducing Negative Self-Talk

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stress overwhelm anxiety depression If the voices in your head are saying anything but positive messages to you, then this is the show for you.

Negative inner dialogue can prevent you from almost everything you want to do in life. So many opportunities will be missed, all because you listened to a voice that is likely misleading you to believing you are something less than you are.

It’s time to switch around those inner voices so that they support you, and maybe even make you laugh. [Read more…]