Emotional Intelligence for Critical Thinkers
What happens when you freeze instead of fight or flee? Is there anything you can do when you simply can’t function? In the first segment, I talk about the inability to move or sometimes even think when something or someone triggers you or you become stressed.
Freezing can often come from childhood when you felt like you could do nothing during a traumatic event. Learn to train yourself to stay aware of what’s happening so that the freeze doesn’t come.
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A long time ago, I was taught that a narcissist was a person who stared into the mirror and adored themselves for hours. But after years of working with couples on many kinds of issues, including narcissistic abuse, my perspective on narcissism has broadened greatly.
Narcissists wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t also drag other people into their world, manipulating them to do what they want regardless of the harm they inflicted. If they kept to themselves, most people could ignore them and go on with life.
[Read more…]Stonewalling is damaging to a relationship and can make it fail if whatever is shut down is never brought up to be resolved. If you give your partner the silent treatment, you need to hear this segment. In segment two, I talk about expectations in friendships. Should friendships be an equal, two-way street or can there be imbalance where one person does all the work and the other just lets them do it?
[Read more…]If you’re one of those people who repress negativity and put on a smile to hide your upset, you are likely creating negative emotions in your body that will eventually lead to depression. If you aren’t sure what I mean, listen to segment one of today’s episode.
In segment two, I talk about how the little spats in relationships that lead to massive blowups have an origin. The unspoken words are what cause those big explosions. It’s time to connect emotionally rather than logically to diffuse the emotional bombs before they explode.
For segment three, I answer the question: What is toxic? Do we call people toxic just to avoid our own personal growth? A listener challenges me on the topic.
Does your partner corner you into a no-win situation? Do they ask you questions that make you wrong no matter what you say?
In the first segment, I talk about double binds in relationships and a couple of ways to get out of the no-win questioning that often happens in both non-abusive and abusive relationships.
For segment 2, I discuss lashing out and where it comes from. Are they new emotions that seem to originate in the moment or are they old, stored emotions that derived from a single point in time?
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