Afraid of online dating? Here are 12 tips to get you started (or back into it)
I hear from so many people who feel triggered and anxious when they contemplate trying online dating or going back to it. They often worry about getting hurt, scammed, wasting their time and yes, making the same dating mistakes they did before. But you don’t...Your growth or boundaries *might* ‘upset’ somebody, and that’s OK
One of the chief arguments for avoiding boundaries is the fear of hurting other people’s feelings and the potential to invite conflict and criticism. As a result, when we embark on anything that might cause us to evolve and basically be different to what people...Were they ‘just trying to be nice’?
Being involved with someone who engages in inappropriate and abusive behaviour, such as gaslighting, harassment, coercive control, and verbal, physical or financial abuse, creates a great deal of self-doubt. After all, for this person to operate in our life, they’ve...Podcast Ep 218: Three Vulnerability Habits to Live By
In this week’s episode of The Baggage Reclaim Sessions, I talk about the three vulnerability habits we all need to build on: admitting what we don’t know, admitting when we’ve made a mistake, and admitting when we’re in the wrong. These habits...It takes time to know someone’s genuine level of emotional availability
A relationship pothole people walk into time and again is this idea that you can declare that someone is ’emotionally available’ in the early stages of dating. It’s as if you can almost look at someone, hear them say something or observe one or a few...Feeling bad about feeling good
When we’re people-pleasers, we imagine that being ‘good’ means that we’ll feel good. Of course, this is super confusing when we feel like crap despite trying to be everyone else’s version of ‘good’. We wrestle with overwhelm,...A note on outgrowing friendships
It’s discomforting to let go of people who have been in your life for a time. We always imagine that friendships will last forever and that the trickier ones will get better. We don’t want to outgrow our friendships. Part of growth and living is letting go...Podcast Ep 217: Trust is a gamble, but we can learn to make good bets
Humans devote so much bandwidth into trying to dodge vulnerability, controlling the uncontrollable, and belatedly addressing boundary issues to allay their fears and insecurities. But our habits wreck our confidence, sabotage intimacy, and can inadvertently cause us...Wanting to know someone’s intentions
There comes a point in situations where we want some indication of what the future holds. At the very least, we want to know that we’re either on a similar page or not wasting our time, energy, effort, emotions or even money. We want to know a person’s...
Not over your ex but hate that they’re not contacting you? Read this
A rather tricky and painful place to be is realising that we’re not over our ex and that it’s too hard to try to be ‘friends’ but then feeling aggrieved and rejected that they’re not still attempting to contact us. If you’ve felt or...
