Practices

Going numb is a good way to survive something and a poor way to live near someone. It shuts the line in both directions at once.

When you cannot feel your own signal you also stop picking up theirs, so the room goes quiet even when they are reaching for you. The loneliness that…

After years of feeling slightly outside every room, pulling back stops being a decision and becomes the setting you live at. Worth knowing about yourself before you conclude that you are simply not a people person.

If you are supporting or treating someone with ADHD, assume the connection has to be built rather than already there, and do not read the flatness…

Pulling back makes you harder to reach, which makes people give up on reaching, which looks like proof that nobody was coming. The loop closes itself.

Being told to open up rarely breaks it, because opening up in one go is exactly the risk the whole strategy exists to prevent. What breaks it is…

Some anger is really about being left. It flares when someone pulls away, goes quiet or seems less interested, and it comes out as an accusation rather than as the fear it is.

The giveaway is that it happens with the same one or two people, the ones whose closeness you rely on. Anger skills alone do little here, because the…