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Your nervous system and your thinking haven’t been updated yet.

Have you ever found yourself reacting to something and later wondered, Why did I get so upset about that?

Maybe someone misunderstood your intentions, and you immediately felt defensive. Someone didn’t respond to your text, and your mind filled in all kinds of stories. A coworker offered a suggestion, and it felt like criticism. Or your partner sighed, and suddenly you found yourself questioning the entire relationship.

Looking back, you realize your reaction seemed way out of proportion to the situation itself.

If you’ve ever had that experience, you’re not broken, overly sensitive, or incapable of handling your emotions.

Most of the time, your first reaction isn’t really about today.

For years, I talked about the importance of becoming less reactive and more responsive. I still believe that’s one of the most important shifts we can make. But today I understand something I didn’t years ago.

For years, I taught people how to set better boundaries. I still do. But today, I think about it differently.

Today, I help people stay connected to themselves long enough to choose a boundary. That may sound like a subtle difference, but it changes everything.

Reacting isn’t simply a habit we need to break. It’s often a survival strategy our nervous system learned long ago.

The Earthquake Is Over. The Fault Lines Remain.

Imagine there was an earthquake many years ago. Eventually, the shaking stopped. Buildings were repaired. Life moved on. From the outside, everything appeared stable again.

But beneath the surface, the fault lines remained.

Years later, something puts pressure on one of those fault lines. It isn’t another earthquake. In fact, it may be something relatively small. Yet because it touches an old fracture beneath the surface, everything inside begins to shake again.

I think that’s what unresolved emotional pain is like.

Many of us experienced emotional earthquakes growing up. We were criticized, rejected, ignored, controlled, shamed, abandoned, or made responsible for other people’s emotions. Our nervous systems adapted the best way they knew how.

Those adaptations weren’t weaknesses. They were brilliant survival strategies.

The problem isn’t that we developed those strategies. The problem is that our nervous systems keep using them long after they stop serving us.

When something in our adult lives touches one of those old fault lines, our bodies often react as though the original event is happening all over again. Intellectually, we know we’re in our adult bodies talking to our boss, our spouse, or a friend. Emotionally, our nervous system feels like we’re seven years old again.

That’s why our reactions sometimes seem so much bigger than the present moment actually calls for.

Why You React Before You Even Know You’re Reacting

One of the biggest insights I’ve had over the past few years is this:

Your nervous system and your thinking haven’t been updated yet.

As children, we didn’t get to choose the beliefs, coping strategies, and emotional patterns we developed. We simply adapted to the environment we were in. If pleasing people kept you emotionally safer, you learned to please people. If staying quiet reduced conflict, you learned to stay quiet. If becoming hypervigilant helped you anticipate danger, your brain became exceptionally good at scanning for problems.

Those strategies served an important purpose. They helped us survive. But what protected us then may be limiting us now.

The situation has changed. You’ve grown up. Yet your nervous system may still be responding as though your childhood environment is your present reality.

The good news is that it doesn’t have to stay that way. As adults, we get to update the programming. That’s what I mean when I talk about building internal safety.

The Moment Everything Changes

For a long time, I thought the goal was simply to pause before reacting. I still think pausing is one of the most valuable skills I’ve ever learned. In fact, it’s still my number one tool of recovery. But my thinking about why it’s so important has evolved.

I don’t think the pause is important because it gives us time to think. I think it’s important because it gives us time to reconnect with ourselves.

It gives us just enough space to notice that today’s situation has touched an old fault line before we automatically hand the steering wheel over to an old survival pattern.

Most reactive moments follow a pattern that looks something like this:

Something happens today

↓

It touches an old emotional fault line

↓

Your nervous system believes the original earthquake is happening again

↓

You lose access to yourself

↓

You make decisions from survival instead of your values

↓

Later you wonder, “Why did I do that again?”

↓

You pause. You reconnect with yourself. You choose differently next time.

That process can happen in a matter of seconds.

• You say yes when you wanted to say no.
• You overexplain.
• You apologize unnecessarily.
• You shut down.
• You become defensive.
• You ignore your own needs because someone else’s emotions suddenly feel more important than your own.

From the outside, it looks like a boundary problem. But boundaries usually don’t collapse because we don’t know what to say. They collapse because, in that moment, we lose access to ourselves. That’s why I believe most boundary problems are really internal safety problems.

The Pause Isn’t About Self Control

When we pause, we’re doing much more than interrupting a reaction. We’re giving ourselves the opportunity to remember ourselves. Instead of letting old programming automatically take over, we can begin asking different questions.

What’s actually happening right now?

Did something just touch one of my old fault lines?

Am I responding to today, or am I reacting to something from long ago?

What do I want?

What do I need?

Those questions help us come back to the present, where we actually have choices.

When we’re emotionally activated, it often feels as though we don’t have any choices. That’s one of the hallmarks of living from old survival patterns. We automatically do what we’ve always done because it doesn’t occur to us that another response is available.

Building internal safety gradually changes that. Little by little, we begin realizing, I don’t have to do what my nervous system first tells me to do.

Building Self Trust One Decision at a Time

I think many people misunderstand what self-trust really is. They think trusting themselves means making the perfect decision every time. I don’t believe that’s true.

Self-trust means trusting yourself to recover from imperfect decisions.

It means believing that even if you say yes when you really wanted to say no, you can recognize it, learn from it, and make a different choice next time.  It means believing that even if you overreact, you know how to repair. It means knowing that even if you lose yourself for a moment, you also know how to find your way back.

That’s real self-trust.

Every decision gives us information. Every boundary we try teaches us something. Sometimes we’ll discover that our response felt exactly right. Other times we’ll realize we’d like to handle it differently next time.

Neither outcome means we’ve failed. Both are helping us update the programming. It’s info, not ammo.

Updating the Programming

One of the things I love most about recovery is that it reminds me change is possible. We aren’t stuck in our childhood survival patterns forever.

Every time we pause before automatically saying yes…

Every time we notice resentment before pushing it aside…

Every time we ask ourselves, What do I actually want here?…

Every time we choose to stay connected to ourselves instead of abandoning ourselves…

We’re teaching our nervous systems something new. We’re teaching them that today’s situations aren’t yesterday’s earthquakes. We’re teaching them that…

• disappointment isn’t danger
• conflict isn’t catastrophe
• someone else’s emotions aren’t an emergency
• discomfort doesn’t mean we’re unsafe

Building internal safety doesn’t mean you’ll never get triggered again. It means that when life touches one of your old fault lines, you know how to find your way back to yourself. And every time you do that, your nervous system learns something it may have never known before:

I’m safe enough to stay with myself now.

Want to go deeper?

If this resonates with you, here are a few places to continue the conversation:

 If you’re looking for support applying these ideas to your own life, learn more about coaching and my current programs.

 Listen to this week’s podcast episode for additional stories and examples.

 Learn more about building internal safety in my course, Boundaries That Hold: How to Stop Overriding Yourself in Real Time.

 Explore my free boundary resources for practical tools you can start using today.

Photo Credit: Gantas Vaiciulenas

One of the phrases I hear most often from clients is some version of “I have to.”

• I have to stay in this job.
• I have to help.
• I have to keep the peace.
• I have to say yes.
• I have to take care of everyone else first.

Sometimes the language is a little different. People tell me they “need” to do something or that they “should” do something. But underneath those phrases is often the same experience. It feels as though life is happening to them and they don’t really have much say in the matter.

For years, that’s how I lived too.

I didn’t realize how many times and in how many areas I felt compelled to do things. I thought I was making decisions, but many of my choices were actually being driven by fear, guilt, obligation, old conditioning, and a overriding desire to avoid disappointing other people. I wasn’t consciously choosing how I wanted to live. I was reacting to what felt safest, most familiar, or most likely to maintain my connection to others.

One of the biggest shifts in my recovery happened when I began to recognize that many of the things I believed I “had to” do were actually choices.

Now before you get annoyed with me, let me acknowledge something important. Sometimes our options are shitty. Sometimes we’re choosing between options we don’t like. Sometimes we’re choosing what feels like the lesser of two evils. But that’s very different from having no choice at all.

I’ve come to believe that one of the reasons people struggle so much with self-trust is that they don’t realize how many choices they’re making every day. When we tell ourselves we have no choice, we stop looking for alternatives. We stop evaluating options. We stop asking ourselves what we actually want. We resign ourselves to the story that this is simply the way things are.

And when we do that, we give away a tremendous amount of our power.

The Difference Between Having No Choice and Not Liking Your Choices

Several years ago, I spoke with someone who told me she had no choice but to continue running a family business she hated.

She inherited the business when she was a single mother with young children and felt trapped. At the time, she believed she had to keep it running because she needed the income to support her family. What struck me wasn’t the decision she made. What struck me was that more than 20 years later, she was still telling herself the same story.

“I didn’t have a choice.”

The reality was that she did have choices. She could have sold the business, closed it, brought in a partner. She could have hired someone else to run it. She could have taken a completely different path. Instead, she gave her the daughters the message, “When you grow up, I’ll be leaving this business to you, and you won’t have a choice either.” 

Interestingly, after we had this conversation, she revealed that the same exact thing had happened to her father: he inherited the business and he didn’t want it either! So the legacy of “you don’t have choices” continued.

Would any of those choices have been easy? Probably not. They may have felt risky, uncomfortable, or financially frightening. But difficult choices are still choices.

One of the hallmarks of victim mentality is the belief that we don’t have options. We start seeing our circumstances as fixed and ourselves as powerless. Once that happens, we stop looking for alternatives because we don’t believe they exist.

What’s fascinating is that when we don’t perceive that we have choices, it’s almost as if we don’t. We behave as though we’re trapped. We stop asking questions. We stop imagining possibilities. We stop considering what we actually want. The result is that we end up living lives shaped more by obligation than intention.

Why We Don’t See Our Choices

For a long time, I thought people struggled with boundaries because they didn’t know how to set them. While I think that’s sometimes true, I no longer believe it’s the primary issue. More often, I think people struggle because they don’t feel safe enough to choose differently.

The options are there, but the emotional cost of exercising those options feels too high. 

• You could say no, but someone might be disappointed.
• You could ask for what you need, but someone might think you’re selfish.
• You could speak up, but someone might disagree with you.
• You could leave the relationship, but then you’d have to face being alone.
• You could stop rescuing people, but then they’d have to experience the consequences of their choices.

From the outside, it looks like there are plenty of options. From the inside, those options can feel terrifying.

That’s why I’ve become so interested in the concept of internal safety. Internal safety is what allows us to tolerate the discomfort that often comes with making choices that are right for us. When we don’t feel safe inside ourselves, we tend to default to whatever option creates the least amount of immediate emotional discomfort.

The problem is that avoiding discomfort and making wise choices are not always the same thing. In fact, many of the most important decisions we make require us to tolerate temporary discomfort in service of a healthier long-term outcome.

What Boundaries Taught Me

When people think about boundaries, they often think about saying no. While that’s certainly part of it, boundaries taught me something much more profound. They taught me that I have choices.

Before recovery, I spent a lot of time acting as though I didn’t. I said yes when I really wanted to say no. I focused on what other people wanted while not even considering what I wanted. I overrode my preferences, dismissed my needs, and subconsciously believed that keeping other people happy was more important than being honest with myself.

What boundaries helped me understand is that I had a say in how my life unfolded.

• I could say yes or I could say no.
• I could stay or I could leave.
• I could speak up or I could remain silent.
• I could continue doing what I’d always doneor I could choose something different.

That realization was incredibly freeing. It’s one of the reasons I often describe boundaries as living on purpose. Boundaries require us to ask questions many of us were never encouraged to ask:

What do I want?

What matters to me?

What do I need?

What do I prefer?

What kind of life am I trying to create?

Those questions shift our attention away from obligation and toward intention. Instead of asking, “What am I supposed to do?” we begin asking, “What choice aligns with who I want to be?”

The Language Shift That Changed Everything

One of the simplest tools I use with clients is helping them pay attention to the language they’re using. When someone tells me they have to do something, I reframe it as something you “get to” do.

At first, that distinction can sound like semantics. But it’s much deeper than that. When we say, “I have to stay in this job,” we create the experience of being trapped. We position ourselves as someone who has no agency and no alternatives.

But what if we said, “I’m choosing to stay in this job because financial stability is important to me right now”? The circumstances haven’t changed. The job is still the same. The paycheck is still the same. The challenges are still the same. But when we realized we’ve making the choice to stay, we get to stop complaining about the job, the boss, the industry, the company. And we get to do the job the best we can under the circumstances, and put our energy into that instead of bitching and complaining. We feel more powerful when we realize, “I’m choosing this.”

What has changed is our relationship to the situation. We’re no longer pretending we have no choice. We’re acknowledging that we’re making one.

The same thing happens when we replace “I should” with “I could.” “I should go to that event” feels heavy and obligatory. “I could go to that event” reminds us that it’s an option.

Likewise, replacing “I need to” with “I’m choosing to” helps us remember that we’re participating in our lives rather than being dragged through them.  The reason these shifts matter isn’t because language magically changes reality.

It’s because language reveals reality. And the reality is that most of us have far more choices than we think we do.

How Self-Trust Is Built

Many people think self-trust is something you either have or you don’t. My experience has been very different. Self-trust is built one choice at a time. Every time you pause and ask yourself what you actually want, you strengthen self-trust. Every time you pay attention to your needs, preferences, values, and limits, you strengthen self-trust. Every time you make a conscious decision rather than operating on autopilot, you strengthen self-trust. Every time you tell the truth instead of abandoning yourself, you strengthen self-trust.

Over time, those small moments create something powerful. They create a secure relationship with yourself.

You begin to trust that you’ll listen when something feels wrong. You begin to trust that you’ll take your own experience seriously. You begin to trust that you won’t automatically abandon yourself in order to gain approval, avoid conflict, or keep other people comfortable.

And once that trust starts to develop, decision-making becomes much easier. Not because every decision is obvious, or because life stops being complicated. But because you’re no longer looking outside yourself for all the answers. You’ve started building a relationship with the one person you’ll spend your entire life with: YOU!

A Different Way to Live

One of the greatest gifts boundaries gave me wasn’t better communication, healthier relationships, or less resentment (although all of those wonderful things happened too). The greatest gift was realizing that I had choices. Once I saw that, I couldn’t unsee it.

I could say yes.

I could say no.

I could stay.

I could leave.

I could continue living according to old patterns and expectations.

Or I could choose something different.

That realization changed everything because it moved the center of gravity in my life. My attention became less focused on what everyone else wanted, expected, or needed from me and more focused on understanding what was true for me.

And thatnis where self-trust begins.

It begins when we stop asking, “What do I have to do?” and start asking, “What am I choosing?”

Photo Credit: Christina Wocintechchat

One of the most important things I’ve learned in recovery is how to have difficult conversations.

For most of my life, I avoided them whenever possible. If something was bothering me, I would think about it endlessly. I’d replay conversations in my head, analyze the situation from every angle, talk about it with other people, and try to figure out how to make the discomfort go away without ever addressing the actual issue.

I used to think of myself as conflict avoidant. In some ways, that’s true. I still don’t enjoy conflict. But over time, I realized that wasn’t really what was happening.

The truth is that I wasn’t avoiding conflict. I was avoiding external conflict. What I was willing to tolerate instead was internal conflict. Like many of us, I learned to tolerate internal conflict in order to avoid external conflict.

I’d rather carry resentment, disappointment, anxiety, frustration, confusion, and self-doubt than risk having an uncomfortable conversation with another person. I was willing to spend days, weeks, months, and sometimes years struggling internally if it meant I didn’t have to risk someone else’s disapproval, anger, disappointment, or misunderstanding.

That realization was a turning point for me. Because once I saw it, I could no longer pretend I was keeping the peace. I wasn’t keeping the peace at all. I was simply relocating the conflict –  instead of having it between another person and me, I was carrying it around inside myself.

I see this all the time with clients. Someone is frustrated with a friend but doesn’t say anything. They’re hurt by their partner, but keep convincing themselves it’s “not a big deal.” They’re overwhelmed at work, but continue saying yes to more responsibilities. Or they have a need, preference, concern or boundary but decide it would be “easier” not to bring it up.

At least initially, that often feels like the safer choice. But it comes at a cost.

The Hidden Cost of Staying Silent

Many people believe they’re protecting their relationships by avoiding difficult conversations. What they’re actually protecting is their short-term comfort.

The problem is that the discomfort doesn’t disappear. It simply changes form.

Instead of having one uncomfortable conversation, they spend weeks replaying the situation in their minds. They become resentful. They start withdrawing emotionally. They obsess about what the other person said or did. They tell themselves stories about what it means. They become exhausted trying to manage their own feelings while simultaneously managing everyone else’s.

I’ve often said that resentment is one of the most reliable signs that a boundary issue is present. Resentment frequently develops when we’ve abandoned ourselves and then blamed someone else for the consequences.

I’ve found that many people focus on the symptom rather than the root cause. They come to me wanting help with resentment, overthinking, burnout, frustration, anxiety, or recurring conflict in their relationships.

Those things are real problems, but they’re often symptoms of something deeper.

Resentment is frequently a symptom of self-abandonment. Overthinking is often a symptom of avoiding a conversation that needs to be had. Emotional exhaustion is frequently a symptom of spending too much energy managing other people’s reactions. Conflict in relationships is often the result of not telling the truth about what we need, want, prefer, or expect.

We tend to focus on the visible problem because that’s what hurts. But if we only address the symptom, the pattern usually continues. That’s why learning to have difficult conversations can be so transformative. It addresses the root cause rather than simply helping us manage the symptoms.

We don’t say what we need, tell the truth or ask for what we want. Then we become upset when the other person fails to read our mind. The difficult conversation we’re avoiding doesn’t go away. It simply becomes an internal argument that never ends.

Why Difficult Conversations Feel So Threatening

If difficult conversations are often healthier than silence, why are they so hard?

Because most of us aren’t actually afraid of the conversation itself. We’re afraid of what might happen because of the conversation.

• What if they get upset?
• What if they think I’m selfish?
• What if they misunderstand me?
• What if they reject me?
• What if they leave?

For many of us, these fears have deep roots.

When emotional connection felt uncertain in childhood, we learned to focus intensely on other people. We learned to monitor moods, reactions, expectations, and approval. We became experts at “reading the room” because it helped us feel safe.

The problem is that many of us carried those strategies into adulthood. We still believe, often unconsciously, that our safety depends on how other people respond to us. And when we believe that’s true, difficult conversations can feel dangerous.

This is where internal safety becomes so important. Internal safety is the ability to stay connected to yourself and your wants, needs and preferences when someone else is disappointed, uncomfortable, angry, confused, or doesn’t understand you.

It doesn’t mean you enjoy those experiences. It means you no longer experience them as evidence that you’ve done something wrong.

The Shift That Changed Everything

For most of my life, my gravitational pull was external. My attention was constantly focused on other people. What did they think (especially of me)? How did they feel? Were they happy with me? Did they approve of me? Did they understand me?

I spent so much energy orienting toward other people’s experiences that I lost touch with my own. One of the things I’ve done for years is repeatedly ask myself, “What’s do I want or need here?”

Not what do they want or need, or what’s better for them. What do *I* want or need?

As simple as that question sounds, it changed my life.

Over time, my gravitational pull shifted from the outside world to my inner world. I became more aware of my own thoughts, feelings, needs, preferences, values, and limits. I became more situated within myself.

And as that happened, difficult conversations became easier. Not easy, easier.

I wasn’t suddenly fearless. People didn’t always respond well. Conversations didn’t magically become comfortable. What changed was that I stopped making other people’s reactions my responsibility. I became more interested in telling the truth than controlling the outcome.

Truth Creates Connection

One of the great ironies of difficult conversations is that people often avoid them because they want to preserve connection. But avoiding them usually prevents genuine connection from developing.

Real intimacy requires truth.

If I’m constantly editing myself, hiding my feelings, suppressing my preferences, and pretending everything is fine when it isn’t, then people aren’t actually relating to the real me. They’re relating to a version of me that has been carefully edited to avoid conflict.

One of the promises from recovery that has absolutely come true in my life is that I now intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle me. That’s not because I’ve become exceptionally wise. I think it’s because I tell the truth now.

I know who I am.

I know what matters to me.

I know what I value.

I know what I need, want, like and prefer.

And when you know those things, you don’t have to work so hard to figure out what to say. You just tell the truth.

A Client Story

I once worked with a client whose teenager told her something incredibly difficult to hear.

The child said, “You and Mama keep telling me you’re proud of me and that you want me to make my own decisions, but everything you do shows me that you don’t trust me to make my own decisions.”

My client initially rejected what her child said. But after reflecting on it, she realized there was truth in it. When we talked about it, I suggested she go back to her child and acknowledge what she had learned.

She told her child that after thinking about it, she could see that what she’d said was true. She admitted that she’d been micromanaging and overprotecting. She acknowledged that her behavior wasn’t matching her intentions.

That conversation was incredibly difficult. No parent wants to hear that they’ve been hurting their own child. No parent wants to admit they were wrong to their kid.

But that conversation changed the trajectory of their relationship. The child felt heard and her experience was validated.

My client became more aware of her own behavior. Trust began to grow between them, and the relationship became stronger because of the conversation they were both afraid to have.

That’s what often happens when we tell the truth. The conversation itself may be difficult, but it creates the possibility for something better.

What Helps

Over the years, I’ve found several things that make difficult conversations easier.

First, get grounded before you have the conversation. Breathe. Feel your feet on the floor. Notice your surroundings. The more connected you are to your body, the less likely you are to get swept away by fear.

Second, know your values. It’s difficult to stand firm when you don’t know what you’re standing for. When you’re clear about what’s important to you, you have solid ground beneath your feet.

Third, get support. One of my favorite recovery tools is something called bookending. Talk to an emotionally healthy person before and after the conversation. Let someone help you process your feelings beforehand and your emotions afterward. Get affirmation from them that you’re doing the right thing, you can handle whatever comes up, you’re not a bad person. Whatever you need to hear.

Fourth, stay focused on one issue. Difficult conversations become much harder when they turn into a review of every grievance from the past decade.

And finally, remember that “hard” is not the same thing as “dangerous.” Many of the clients I work with tell me, “This is so hard.” My response is, “You’re right. It is hard.” But you’ve been doing hard things your entire life.

The question isn’t whether you’ll do hard things. The question is which hard you’re going to choose. The temporary discomfort of growth when you start to tell the truth? Or the ongoing (and perhaps never ending) discomfort of resentment, rumination, self-abandonment, and emotional exhaustion?

The Real Purpose of Difficult Conversations

Most people think difficult conversations are about getting another person to understand them. Sometimes that happens, sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve come to believe that the deeper purpose of difficult conversations is learning how to stay connected to yourself while telling the truth.

It’s learning how to remain anchored in your own reality while allowing another person to have theirs. Learning how to express what’s true for you without taking responsibility for someone else’s reaction. It’s learning how to stay present with discomfort without abandoning yourself.

Over the years, I’ve come to see that this is one of the most important functions of boundaries. Most people think boundaries are about controlling other people’s behavior. I don’t see them that way at all.

I think healthy boundaries create secure attachment to self.

Every time you tell the truth instead of overriding yourself, you strengthen trust in yourself. Every time you honor your needs, preferences, values, or limits, you send yourself the message that your experience matters. Every time you stay connected to yourself while someone else is disappointed or uncomfortable, you reinforce the belief that you won’t abandon yourself in order to keep someone else happy.

That’s why boundaries become easier over time. You’re not just changing your behavior. You’re building a more secure relationship with yourself.

That’s what social boundaries look like in practice. The goal isn’t to eliminate conflict from your life. It’s to stop creating conflict within yourself in order to avoid conflict with others.

Because when you stop abandoning yourself, something remarkable happens. You stop being so afraid of abandonment because you’re no longer abandoning yourself. You become someone you can trust. You learn that discomfort doesn’t mean danger, disagreement doesn’t mean disconnection, and someone else’s reaction doesn’t determine your worth. From that place, difficult conversations become a whole lot easier.

Difficult conversations are social boundaries in action.

Featuring Roberta Friedman, Rita Hannafin, Sheila Kaczmarek, and Kathy Kane

The treasure of sea glass is not only in its varied shapes and colors, but also in the surprise and happenstance of it. The same is true for the exhibit SEA GLASS: INTERPRETATIONS OF WATER, on view at City Gallery from July 10 - August 1. The show features a colorful and unexpected collection of fiber arts, paintings, and sculpture by member artists Roberta Friedman, Rita Hannafin, Sheila Kaczmarek, and Kathy Kane. Visit the gallery Friday - Sunday, 12 p.m. - 4 p.m., or come to the Artist Reception on Saturday, July 25., 2-4 p.m.

Working with a variety of media, and inspired by living near the water — the work of these four artists tell distinct stories connected by common threads of creativity and an artist’s view of the world around us.

Roberta Friedman’s encaustics, collages, and paintings haven been shown throughout the New Haven area for more than 40 years. She has participated in painting workshops at Omega Institute, with Judith Cornell’s Mandala workshops, with watercolorist Jan Hart at Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, New Mexico, and with many well regarded local teachers, especially Hilda Levy. She continues to study and share her knowledge of water media and collage techniques with children, teens, and adults in the greater New Haven area.

Rita Daley Hannafin tells stories by combining various textiles, stitch, paint, collage, and digital imagery in her art quilts. She discovered this medium after moving to Connecticut in 2004, combining a lifelong love of art with her passion for textiles. Since then, her work has explored landscape, climate change, politics, personal stories and abstraction. She is currently a member of Studio Art Quilt Associates, the Black Rock Art Guild, and City Gallery in New Haven. Her work is included in the National Registry of Quilts.

Kathy Kane has maintained a studio in Erector Square in New Haven for more than 30 years. She is a member of City Gallery, Guilford Art League, and the Connecticut Watercolor Society, and she has exhibited her work at numerous Connecticut galleries. Kane has traveled nationally displaying her watercolor paintings at juried museum art shows and has won many prizes. She resides in East Haven.

Sheila Kaczmarek works with mixed media, including clay. Her interest lies in both the process of layering and in stripping away surfaces. She apprenticed in the ceramic studio of Guilford Art Center for 5 years. Her work with clay involves both high and low fired clay, pit firing, and Raku. Her clay surfaces sometimes incorporate paint, metal and encaustic wax.

The exhibit SEA GLASS: INTERPRETATIONS OF WATER and the Artist Reception are free and open to the public. City Gallery is located at 994 State Street, New Haven, CT 06511. Gallery hours are Friday - Sunday, 12 p.m. - 4 p.m., or by appointment. For further information please contact City Gallery, info@city-gallery.org, www.city-gallery.org.

Photo Credit: Daria Trofimova

Have you ever had someone say something about you that felt was completely untrue? Maybe they told you that you’re selfish or inconsiderate, or they said you don’t care about them.

Whatever the accusation, before you even had time to think, you found yourself mentally gathering evidence for your defense. You started making a list of all the ways you’ve shown up, all the things you’ve done for them, and all the reasons they’re wrong.

Most of us do this automatically. We want to correct the misunderstanding. We want to explain ourselves. We want the other person to see that they’re wrong. And of course that’s understandable.

But here’s what I’ve learned: when someone says something painful about you, defending yourself too quickly often gets in the way of real communication.

Years ago, I was talking with a fellow in recovery whose husband told her, “You don’t care about me.” She could have immediately responded with a list of all the ways she cared about him. Most of us would have been tempted to do exactly that. Instead, she got curious.

She asked him what had led him to believe that. As they talked, something important emerged. He believed that because she hadn’t done what he wanted, she hadn’t listened to him. And from that, he concluded that she didn’t care about him.

What they eventually discovered was that they were operating from completely different definitions of what it meant to listen and to care. She had heard him perfectly well. She simply disagreed with him. And that disagreement wasn’t evidence that she didn’t care. He was conflating listening with agreement, and agreement with caring.

Without that conversation, they would have stayed stuck in conflict. With it, they were able to understand what was actually happening.

One of the things I teach all the time is that understanding someone’s feelings doesn’t require agreeing with their conclusions. Someone may genuinely feel uncared for. That feeling is real  for them. But it doesn’t automatically mean you don’t care about them. Those are two very different things.

This distinction matters because so many people with weak boundaries immediately move into one of two positions. They either defend themselves or they abandon themselves.

Defending yourself sounds like, “That’s ridiculous. Of course I care about you. Here are the umpteen different pieces of evidence to show that you’re wrong.”

Abandoning yourself sounds like, “Oh no. Maybe they’re right. Maybe I really am selfish. Maybe I did do something terrible and I need to fix it right now.”

Neither response creates connection with the other person. What creates connection is staying anchored in your own reality while remaining curious about someone else’s reality. That’s where internal safety becomes so important.

When someone criticizes you, misunderstands you, or tells you that you’ve hurt them, your nervous system may react as though you’re in danger. You might feel a rush of anxiety or an overwhelming urge to explain yourself. You might start rehearsing arguments in your head because you’re desperate for them to see your side and understand you.

But discomfort isn’t danger. And other people’s disappointment isn’t proof that you’ve done something wrong.

The more internal safety you develop, the more capable you become of hearing difficult things without immediately moving into defense, attack, fixing, rescuing, or self-blame. Instead, you can become curious.

You can ask questions like…

“What happened that led you to feel that way?” 

“Can you tell me more about that?” 

“What am I missing?” 

“What did I do that caused you to believe I don’t care about you?”

Notice that none of those questions require you to agree with the other person’s interpretation. They simply help you understand their experience.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about social boundaries as giving yourself permission to be who you are socially. Part of that means allowing other people to have experiences, feelings, and interpretations that you don’t necessarily agree with. That’s harder than it sounds.

Most of us want to be seen accurately. We want people to understand our intentions. We want them to know we’re good people who care. And when someone forms a conclusion about us that feels unfair, of course it’s natural to want to correct the record.

But social boundaries aren’t about controlling what other people think of us, because we can’t. They’re about staying connected to what’s true for us while allowing other people to have their own experience.

That doesn’t mean their interpretation is correct, and it doesn’t mean you have to agree with it. It certainly doesn’t mean you have to take responsibility for it. It means you’re willing to let their experience belong to them while you remain grounded in your own reality.

In the example above, the husband genuinely felt uncared for. His feeling was real. But that didn’t automatically make his conclusion true. His wife didn’t need to convince him he was wrong before she could listen to him. She also didn’t need to agree that she was uncaring. The social boundary was staying connected to herself while remaining open to understanding him.

That’s a very different posture than defending yourself, fixing the other person, or collapsing into self-doubt. It’s the ability to hear from someone, “This is my experience of you,” without immediately turning it into, “This is the truth about me” in your head.

I’ve come to realize that one reason I’m much better able to hear other people’s interpretations of me today is that I’m no longer looking at myself primarily through their eyes.

For much of my life, I was scattered outside myself. Someone would have an opinion about me, and I’d immediately leave my own experience and “climb” into theirs. I’d start evaluating myself through their interpretation, trying to determine whether they were right, whether I was wrong, and what I needed to do to change their perception.

Today, I experience that very differently.

I’m much more situated within myself. I occupy my own life, my own body, and my own experience. I stay connected to what I know, what I feel, and what’s true for me.

That doesn’t mean I assume I’m always right. It doesn’t mean I stop listening to feedback. It simply means I no longer leave myself in order to understand someone else.

And ironically, that allows me to listen more openly than I ever could before.

When you’re frantically trying to determine whether you’re okay, it’s difficult to hear what someone is actually saying. But when you’re anchored in yourself, you can become genuinely curious about their experience without immediately turning it into a verdict about who you are.

If you’re wondering how someone becomes more anchored in themselves, I don’t think it happens all at once.

For most of my life, my center of gravity existed outside of me. My attention was constantly pulled toward other people’s feelings, reactions, opinions, expectations, and interpretations.

If someone was upset, I focused on them.

If someone misunderstood me, I focused on them.

If someone disapproved of me, I focused on them.

My attention automatically moved outward.

Over time, I developed a simple practice that changed everything. You might have heare md state in in years past as, “Keep the focus on yourself.” But that doesn’t mean “become selfish.” What it looks like is this: whenever I noticed myself getting pulled into someone else’s experience, I gently redirected my attention back to myself.

What do I want, need, think of feel here?

I asked those questions over and over and over again. Little by little, my center of gravity shifted.

Today, I’m much more likely to stay connected to my own experience while listening to someone else’s. And I think that’s one reason I’m able to hear interpretations I disagree with without immediately becoming defensive or collapsing into self-doubt.

You can’t create internal safety by focusing externally.

If your attention is always fixed on managing other people’s reactions, changing their opinions, or securing their approval, you’ll never experience the steadiness that comes from being connected to yourself.

Internal safety grows when your center of gravity moves from the outside world back into your own life.

One of the most powerful social boundaries you can develop is the ability to tolerate being misunderstood. Not because you enjoy it or it feels good. But because your sense of who you are is no longer entirely dependent on someone else’s interpretation.

When someone tells you they’ve been hurt, disappointed, or upset, there may be something important for you to learn. There may also be misunderstandings, assumptions, or conclusions that simply aren’t true.

The goal isn’t to prove your innocence or make them agree with you. The goal is to stay anchored in your own reality long enough to discover what’s actually happening.

That’s where genuine communication begins. And it’s one of the clearest signs that you’re no longer abandoning yourself in your relationships.

Photo Credit: Matt Bango

One of the most important things I learned about boundaries came from recovery meetings. And honestly, when I first encountered it, I hated it.

It’s called the “no cross-talk” rule. When someone shares during a meeting, you don’t interrupt them. You don’t comment on what they said. You don’t give advice. You don’t tell them what they should do. You don’t try to fix their problem, and you don’t comfort them.

When I first heard this, it seemed cold and uncaring. If someone was crying, we weren’t supposed to hand them tissues. If someone was struggling, we weren’t supposed to jump in with advice. If someone shared something painful, we weren’t supposed to reassure them or tell them everything would be okay.

I just didn’t understand how this was supportive. And wasn’t this supposed to be a support group?

What I eventually learned is that the rule isn’t about being distant. It’s about respecting boundaries. More specifically, it’s about allowing people to have their own experience.

My Job Wasn’t What I Thought It Was

Before recovery, I thought being caring meant getting involved.

Read the rest at your own pace here

Alex Moliski

One of the biggest misconceptions people have about self-care is that it’s mostly about adding things to your life: bubble baths, massages, vacations, pedicures, yoga classes, meditation apps. And while there’s absolutely nothing wrong with any of those things, most people don’t actually need more self-care activities. They need to stop overriding themselves.

They need to stop saying yes when their whole body is saying no. They need to stop performing participation while secretly counting the minutes until they can leave. They need to stop exhausting themselves trying to keep the peace while quietly abandoning themselves in the process. That’s where self-care boundaries come in, because real self-care isn’t just about what you add to your life. It’s also about what you stop forcing yourself to endure.

I was reminded of this when I reread a message from a former client. She had gone away with family for Thanksgiving and texted me something that perfectly captures what healthy boundaries actually make possible. She said:

“I just ended up backing out of a family hike because I hate hiking and needed alone time. I was able to let them know I just need some alone time, and they should go on without me. And it was so freeing, and I’m so enjoying soaking up these quiet hours alone.

If I hadn’t done this, I don’t think I would have been very pleasant on the hike or at dinner tonight. But now I’ll be rested up and ready to talk all evening. Thank you for teaching me how to do this gracefully.”

I love this story because on the surface, it sounds so simple. She skipped a hike. But underneath that decision was an enormous internal shift. She stopped abandoning herself in real time, and honestly, that’s what self-care boundaries are really about. Not controlling other people, becoming rigid or refusing to participate in life. And not turning into someone who only does what they want all the time. It’s about learning how to stay connected to yourself while you’re making decisions.

That means being able to hear yourself clearly. Being able to notice your own limits before resentment takes over. Being able to remember what’s true for you, even when other people are disappointed, confused, or doing things differently than you would. 

For many people, especially women who grew up in dysfunctional families, this is incredibly difficult because we learned that being “good” meant going along to get along, being easy-going, low maintenance, always available, and being accommodating. So we override ourselves constantly and call it being “nice.”

But eventually that creates exhaustion, resentment, irritability, emotional shutdown, and disconnection from ourselves as well as others. Then we wonder why we don’t even know what we want anymore. It’s because we’ve spent years leaving ourselves.

What struck me most about my client’s message was not that she hated hiking. It was that she finally allowed that truth to matter.

Read the rest at your own pace here

Not everything that looks like self-care actually nourishes you.

Sometimes what we call “self-care” is actually avoidance. Sometimes what looks like rest is shutdown. And sometimes what feels like helping is really self-abandonment in disguise.

And that’s why I think one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves is this:

What’s my motivation here?

Not: “Is this good or bad?”

Not: “Would other people approve of this?”

Not even: “Does this technically count as self-care?”

But: “What is this actually doing for me emotionally?”

That question changed my life.

Years ago, when I first started learning about codependence and recovery, I heard someone say that the difference between healthy helping and rescuing behavior is your motivation. At first, I didn’t understand that at all.

I thought I was just a nice, helpful, generous, and thoughtful person. What I couldn’t yet see was that much of my helping behavior was driven by anxiety, fear, approval-seeking, and an unconscious attempt to control outcomes (esp. what others thought of me) so I could feel emotionally safe.

I wasn’t helping because I simply wanted to help. I was helping because I needed something (Yikes! What a revelation!). 

I needed reassurance, connection, validation, certainty, and relief from discomfort. That realization opened an entirely new way of understanding myself.

And over the years, I’ve realized this same question helps us understand so many things related to self-care, boundaries, healing, and emotional well-being. Because the same exact behavior can be healthy or unhealthy depending on what’s happening underneath it.

Alone Time or Isolation?

One of the clearest examples is time alone. Healthy solitude can be deeply nourishing. It can look like reading, resting, skating, coloring, napping, working on a puzzle, going for a walk, journaling, creating art, or simply enjoying your own company without needing to perform for anyone.

Healthy alone time usually feels intentional. There’s choice in it. You’re present with yourself.
You have a sense of returning to yourself rather than disappearing from yourself. You often leave it feeling more grounded, more connected, more energized, or more settled inside yourself.

Isolation feels different. It often comes from overwhelm, shame, fear, exhaustion, resentment, or emotional flooding. Instead of reconnecting with yourself, you’re trying to escape yourself (or the world). Or avoid feelings you don’t know how to stay with.

That’s a very different internal experience.

The external behavior may look identical (you’re still alone, still at home and may even still be watching Netflix under a blanket). But internally, one experience is restorative and the other is draining.

One creates more internal safety. The other slowly disconnects you from yourself.

That is why your motivation matters.

Read the rest at your own pace here

Photo Credit: Braxton Apana

There’s a phrase I heard years ago by the Buddhist teacher Cheri Huber that completely changed the way I relate to emotions:

“You are responsible for your feelings, not for your feelings.”

At the time, I understood it intellectually. But I don’t think I truly understood it emotionally until recovery. I get now that you don’t need to explain your feelings. You actually don’t even need to understand them. You just need to honor them (i.e., feel them). That’s what it means to be responsible TO your feelings.

For most of my life, I thought feelings were problems to solve, explain, justify, control or suppress. I believed that if I felt something intensely, there had to be a reason. And that there was some kind of fix or strategy to make it go away.

Especially if the feeling was inconvenient, made other people uncomfortable, and particularly if it made me uncomfortable. So instead of feeling my feelings, I analyzed them. Rationalized them. Judged them. I tried to out-think them (or ignored them completely while focusing on everyone else!).

That’s what so many people do when they’ve learned that emotions aren’t safe. Not physically safe, relationally safe, and especially not internally safe. Once you understand that, so much starts to make sense.

When Feelings Didn’t Feel Safe

I grew up in a family where feelings weren’t really welcome. Actually, that’s not entirely true. Some feelings were allowed: calmness, pleasantness, composure. But sadness, anger, overwhelm, grief or vulnerability? Nope!

One of the worst things my father used to say to me was:

“Do you want me to give you a reason to cry?!”

That sentence carries so much distortion inside it. It really fucked me up.

It taught me: My feelings weren’t real, my emotions were excessive and that I shouldn’t trust myself. I got the message, “You need to shut this down immediately.”

And for many people, that’s where self-abandonment began. That’s not because they consciously chose it, but because overriding themselves became necessary for emotional survival.

So they stopped asking: “What am I feeling?”

And started asking: “How do I make this go away?”

Or worse: “How do I make sure nobody else has to deal with it?”

Read the rest at your own pace here

Photo Credit: Alex Shadowz

This past week I had one of those moments where I realized how much my relationship with my own mind has changed.

I was thinking about something coming up and noticed myself starting to go down a familiar (negative) path. You know the one… Thinking through all the possible scenarios, trying to predict what might happen - what someone might say, how I might respond. It wasn’t even particularly dramatic, but I could feel the shift in my body. It felt tighter, I felt a sense of urgency and a pull to “figure it out.”

And then I caught it. Not in a harsh way. Just a simple, “oh… this is a story, not a prediction of the future.”

That one moment changed everything. Because instead of continuing down that path of living into the wreckage of the future (and jacking up my nervous system), I paused and came back to reality.

I never used to be able to do that. I didn’t even know it was an option!

When Your Thoughts Feel Like Facts

Have you ever caught yourself thinking something like:

• They’re upset with me… I must’ve done something wrong 
• This is never gonna work out 
• She’s gonna think I’m a bad person
• Something bad is going to happen, I can feel it 

And then, without even realizing it, your mood shifts, your body tightens, and your nervous system start reacting as if that thought is true.

That’s not just overthinking. It’s you believing a story your mind is telling you. And most of the time, you don’t even realize you’re doing it. Stories are not predictions of the future. They’re stories.

Read the rest at your own pace here.

The summit between President Trump and President Xi Jinping in Beijing next week could be the most significant encounter between American and Chinese leaders since Richard Nixon met Mao Zedong in Beijing in 1972.

That summit eased decades of Sino-American animosity and forged a tacit alliance between the United States and China against the Soviet Union. This summit comes at a similar transformational moment in world affairs, when there is a new shared threat to both China and America. It is a metastasizing disorder that could destabilize the world and harm both countries unless they figure out a way to simultaneously compete and collaborate against a growing list of challenges. These challenges can be successfully confronted only by their collective action — starting with the United States and China together creating guardrails against the malign uses of A.I., now that the latest models have demonstrated staggeringly powerful cyberattack capabilities.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/05/opinion/trump-xi-summit-ai-global-threats.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

I’m local to New Haven and want to share briefly.

Alongside my coaching business, I offer part-time administrative support for professionals who need help staying organized and keeping things running smoothly but don’t need a full-time hire.

I’m currently looking to take on one consistent role, around 20 hours a week.

If that’s something that might be helpful now or in the future, I’d be glad to connect.

Photo Credit: Tanya-Barrow

If you’ve ever thought:

• Why do I keep saying yes when I really want to say no? 
• Why do I know what to do but can’t seem to follow through? 
• Why do I keep ending up exhausted, resentful, or overwhelmed? 

There’s a good chance you’re dealing with something most people never name directly.

Self-abandonment.

I don’t say that lightly. It’s strong language, and I use it on purpose because softer language can sometimes let us off the hook because we think “it’s not that bad.” When we say things like “I’m not following through” or “I need more discipline,” we miss what’s actually happening.

We’re leaving ourselves. Abandoning what we know we want or is in our best interest.

Read the rest at your own pace here.

Interested in affordable housing and community development? Looking to be more involved in your community? 

LISC Connecticut's Housing and Community Development Leadership Institute (HCDLI) is looking for individuals to join the program in Bridgeport this May! The HCDLI is a free professional development program aiming to build a pipeline of emerging and seasoned leaders within the affordable housing and community development sector. Starting May 5, the HCDLI will convene a cohort in Bridgeport for an intensive 8-week program focused on helping participants build a foundation in the sector through core content trainings, advanced professional development opportunities, and networking. 

There's still time to join the Bridgeport cohort and we'd love to have you! Submit an application before Friday, May 1. Learn more here!

Photo Credit: Itstock

Practical strategies to manage email, meetings, workload, and expectations without burning out

Why Knowing Isn’t Enough

By now, you probably understand that boundaries matter. But knowing that doesn’t automatically change your behavior.

The real challenge is this: following through when it feels uncomfortable.

Because setting boundaries at work isn’t just a logistical issue. It’s an emotional one. Guilt, fear of judgment, and anxiety about consequences are what stop most people from taking action. And your livelihood might be at stake in the workplace, which is different than in personal relationships.

Read the rest at your own pace here.

As food justice leaders experience attacks on their work, they need spaces that allow them to show up as their whole selves. They need reserves of resilience to tap into through difficult times. We need to put joy and connection at the heart of our work to build new systems rooted in justice and liberation.

We must meet this food crisis together, and for that we need leadership from the nonprofit, philanthropic, government and private sectors. The Seeding Power Fellowship is designed to reduce isolation, practice communication and collaboration, and deepen relationships. It provides not only leadership development, but critical movement infrastructure to build a responsive strategy and create a just food system.

Community Food Funders is currently accepting applciations for the 4th cohort of Seeding Power. The application deadline is April 30, 2026. We invite applications from movement leaders and philanthropic partners (funders) in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.

Please check out our website to decide if this opportunity is right for you!

https://communityfoodfunders.org/seedingpower/

Reclaim your time, reduce stress, and stop over-giving by shifting how you think about responsibility, control, and work-life balance

The Lie That Keeps You Overwhelmed

Most people who feel overwhelmed at work think the problem is their workload.

Too many emails. Too many meetings. Too many demands.

But that’s not actually the root issue. The real problem is a lack of boundaries, combined with a belief that you don’t have a choice.

I see this with clients all the time. They feel pulled in a dozen directions, stretched too thin, all while building a smoldering resentment. They project competence and confidence on the outside. Meanwhile, they feel like they’re falling apart on the inside. Sometimes they keep it together until the meeting ends, then they run into the bathroom to cry because they can’t hold it together any longer.

What changes everything isn’t the workload. It’s realizing you have way more control than you think.

Read the rest at your own pace here.

Featuring work by Amy Arledge

With work that is multifaceted in both theme and construction, artist Amy Arledge returns to City Gallery in ECLECTIC, an exhibit of encaustic and assemblage works. The show will be on view from May 1 - May 31, with an Opening Reception on Saturday, May 2 at 2-4 p.m.

“Nature is an endless source of fascination and inspiration for me,” says Arledge. “It is a common thread in all of my work, whether through actual depiction or in abstract shapes and colors.”

Arledge’s primary medium is encaustic — a combination of purified beeswax and damar, a tree resin that adds durability to the beeswax. The word encaustic is derived from the Greek enkaustikos which means to burn in. Encaustic was used in Ancient Greece and Egypt both as an artistic medium and a building tool. “I’ve painted with encaustic for several years depicting landscapes, seascapes and the non-objective,” explains Arledge.

Her assemblages originate from found objects, often wood, which resemble something in addition to what they actually are. She adds color, additional items, and sometimes wax to accentuate what she sees and give them personalities.

Arledge’s work has been included in numerous solo and group shows including Artspace (New Haven), ARTview (Washington, D.C), City Lights Gallery (Bridgeport), Creative Arts Workshop (New Haven), John Slade Ely House (New Haven), Kobalt Gallery (Provincetown, MA), Lemon Street Gallery (Kenosha, WI), New Haven Paint and Clay Club  Annual Juried Exhibition), Periodic Table of Elements Printmaking Project (Concord, MA), River Street Gallery, New Haven CT), Slater Museum (Norwich), The Institute Library (New Haven), Whitney Center Art Gallery (Hamden), and Yale Medical Library (New Haven). Visit her website for more information, amyarledge.com.

The exhibit ECLECTIC and the opening reception are free and open to the public. City Gallery is located at 994 State Street, New Haven, CT 06511. Gallery hours are Friday - Sunday, 12 p.m. - 4 p.m., or by appointment. For further information please contact City Gallery, info@city-gallery.org, www.city-gallery.org.