Category Archives: I’ve been thinking

Our bodies tell us what it’s like to be ourselves

There are so many little ways I inhabit and experience my body. Which is just another way of saying there are so many little sensory experiences that add up to “what it feels like to be me”. Typing right now, my thumb nail is digging slightly into the skin around it, making a strange scratching…More

Trying to find security in the most insecure places

I was thinking of Abraham Maslow‘s hierarchy of needs the other day. All needs are about security. Fulfilling a need is making our well-being more certain, making our lives more secure. Everything we seek out is, in some way, helping us feel more secure. Security (because it helps ensure our survival) drives pretty much all…More

Why women cry about criticism

Was this click-bait-y and enraging enough? I gave it my best. At the gym the other day I was thinking about the tired trope that women cry when criticized. I hate this trope for several reasons, none of which I realized are relevant to the actual truth value (whatever it may be) of the trope.…More

We (must) matter most to ourselves

As I was continuing my thoughts about friendships (SO. MANY. THOUGHTS), one word that kept coming to mind was “matter.” To form a friendship is to make someone matter to us. To matter is to be of importance. To matter to someone is to be of importance (to be important) to someone. All relationships are…More

The way we build friendships (though we may not realize it)

In talking through my ideas in my previous post about criteria for Good Friends, a friend and I were talking about what it looks like when two people are mismatched in terms of either capacity, interest, and availability. Friendships are different from the donor-fundraiser relationship in a fundamental way: in friendships, both parties have something…More

How looking for donors changed how I look for friends

I’ve been thinking about friendships lately. (I think this is one of my perennial wonderings, it turns out. Friendships are weird.) I had a couple hard situations where I felt really let down, and I started to question what I was looking for in friendships and why I was investing in friendships that were ultimately…More

Emotions: intuitions that something, somewhere, is important

Intuitions are awesome; as a very intuitive person, I find intuitions to be incredibly exciting but also infuriating. Infuriating because while I get intuitions all the time, I can’t fully rely on them. Before I can follow an intuition, I need to understand what’s going on underneath it, to examine the basis of it, to…More

Does empathy translate?

Since I started my post on what I do to forgive myself, empathy has been big on my mind. Part of this has been self-centered — I have always been seen as (and consider myself to be) deeply empathic. I believe the ability to empathize is twofold, being both a natural capacity and an action.…More

How I am forgiving myself

As I was thinking through a particularly painful, fraught interpersonal issue the other day (the one that sparked my post on emotions and needs), I found myself getting fairly amped up and frustrated at myself for having let the situation go on as long as I did. Why didn’t I see it all earlier?! Why…More