Overcoming a Dysfunctional Litter
If I don’t write down my ideas right away, sometimes I forget them. This is what happened with the post I did about Labels a couple of weeks ago. What I said in that post was fine, but it wasn’t what I’d originally intended because what I originally intended had slipped my mind entirely. I [...]
I rarely rant on BNK, except for an occasional foray into politics that I usually regret. (Brave New Kitty is meant to be inclusive and supportive, not opinionated and divisive.) But I had an experience with my family over the past several days that I just have to share. There’s going to be some middle [...]
“A good, loving kick in the ass” was another phrase I heard in AA meetings. Usually, somebody said it about their sponsor, when given some tough love by him or her at just the right moment. Or, sometimes a person said it about himself, meaning that he was able to make himself do the next [...]
His mama ran off when he was just a kid So he never really knew her at all Just a picture of a girl in a sad blue dress Hanging beside a cross on the wall His daddy used to drive those eighteen wheelers Now he drives the bottle deep into the night He was [...]
Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.–John F. Kennedy All of us are, at times, functioning at less than our optimum capacity. When we’re tired, stressed, overworked, worried, or angry, our “psychic immune system” is not at its best, and we see the world as [...]
“Low self esteem,” “self loathing,” and the like are facile labels for why people sometimes don’t take better care of themselves. And even if they are sometimes true, I think they only hint at the deeper reasons, reasons that are as complex and messy as human nature itself. When I say “taking better care of [...]
One more piece of groundwork (see previous two posts here and here) that many people must lay before they can go on to build lasting self-esteem is to allow ourselves to feel deserving of good things. (Actually, there are probably many more, but these are the ones that I’ve had to work on the most). [...]
In addition to soothing anxiety and learning to stay on our own side, another important kind of groundwork some of us must learn is to allow ourselves to feel good about ourselves and our accomplishments. If we come from a shame-based background, this can be a difficult lesson to learn. I had this lesson driven [...]
In 2007, I wrote a post I called How to Feel Better About Yourself in Five Minutes a Day or Less. I stand by the advice I gave, but my focus was off. I should have called it “How to Feel Better in Five Minutes a Day or Less” and left the “self” out of it, [...]
If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too: If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being [...]