Practices

Arranging your face into a caring expression does not reliably produce the caring. Do not expect the feeling to turn up just because you set the mouth.

The idea that holding a smile makes you happier has had a rough time whenever researchers try to repeat it, so it is not something to promise…

You can feel for the child in front of you and still keep the consequence you set. Being moved was never meant to be the thing that decides.

It happens to everybody. You are firm, then you see the crumpled face, something turns over in you, and the consequence quietly disappears. What the…

You are allowed to try something because it seems sensible. What you should not do is tell yourself it is proven, because that is what stops you noticing when it does not work for you.

The idea that going without company makes you hungrier for it is a reasonable guess, and mostly still a guess. Keep it in that shape. If a quieter…

A drink does loosen people up, and that is not a reason to use it. Something can work and still be a poor way to get what you want.

This one matters because the reasoning holds right up until the moment it does not. If a thing softens you tonight and charges you tomorrow, it is…

Say it plainly when you do not know. This seems to help and I am not sure why costs you far less than confidence you cannot back up.

People trust someone who marks their own guesses. It keeps you honest with yourself too, because a claim you have labelled a hunch is one you can…

Reading about anger will not make you gentler. Warmth is a skill with reps, like anything else, and it fades when nobody practises it.

Most anger advice works on the mind: catch the thought, question it, breathe. Useful, and none of it is the same as actually feeling something for…

If you have gone numb around other people's pain, the numbness almost certainly started as protection. It kept you upright at a time when feeling all of it would have flattened you.

The trouble is that it does not switch itself off when the danger passes. You find yourself unmoved in front of someone you love, and then you blame…

Years of putting up with things build a thicker skin, and that same skin is what stops you being reached by the person in front of you. It can thin again.

Nobody sets out to get harder. It happens quietly, one shrug at a time, until a story that would have undone you at twenty barely registers at forty.…

There is more than one way into someone else's world. You can picture yourself in their place, picture them in it, or simply let their state affect you, and the three do not feel the same or lead to the same place.

Picturing yourself in their place tends to raise your own distress, which can leave you wanting relief more than wanting to help them. Picturing them…

Give yourself an instruction you can rehearse. Copy one thing about how the other person is holding themselves, once a day, and notice what follows.

Advice like be more understanding gives you nothing to practise. Advice like match their pace when they speak gives you something you can do on a…

Feeling close to your own people does not automatically make you kinder to everybody else. Sometimes it does the opposite and sharpens the line between us and them.

This is worth watching in yourself, particularly if you are the sort who gets angry on behalf of a group. The same warmth that makes you loyal can…

The advice to touch, to eat together, to move your body, to say the true thing out loud stands up perfectly well without the hormone story attached.

Explanations that hang on a single chemical are memorable and usually too tidy, and the studies behind the popular version are often small. None of…

Telling somebody one thing you are quietly embarrassed about will bring you closer than a month of pleasant conversation.

It does not have to be dramatic. The worry you have never said out loud, the mistake you still think about at night, the thing you are no good at.…

If you keep saying yes and then feeling furious about it, the problem may not be that you care too much. Often it is that you cannot bear anyone being displeased with you.

The two look identical from outside and they need completely different answers. Genuine feeling for someone is warm and tiring. Fear of disapproval…

If it really is that you feel too much for people, the useful move is not more feeling. It is learning to say no while still meaning them well.

Naming your softness as something that gets used is what makes a limit bearable to set. You are not becoming colder. You are stopping the slow build…

You cannot decide to feel closer to people. You can decide to eat with them, walk with them, sit near them and say one true thing, and the closeness tends to follow.

The chemistry gets talked about a great deal and it is the least useful part. What you can act on is the diary: a standing meal with someone, a hand…

Four ordinary things take the edge off a hot temper: being touched by someone you trust, eating with people, moving your body hard enough to breathe, and sitting still for a few minutes a day.

None of them are about anger directly, which is the point. Exercise lowers what you are already carrying before the argument starts. A shared meal…

If eating together helps, it is the together that is helping. Being full is not a route to feeling close, and treating it as one goes wrong quickly for some people.

Sit down with somebody once a week and eat whatever you were going to eat anyway. That is the whole practice. If you notice yourself reaching for…

Two people who spend time in step really do become more attuned. Nothing passes between your brains while it happens, though, so put the hours in rather than waiting for the wiring.

The phrase about brains wiring together is a picture, and a lovely one. What is actually available to you is ordinary: the same room, the same walk…

Closeness arrives much faster in a small group that keeps meeting than in a wide circle you see now and then. If you want to feel less alone, pick the small thing that repeats.

Six people who show up every Tuesday and say something real will know each other within a couple of months. Sixty acquaintances will not. It does not…