Category: My feelings tell me

My feelings tell me something. But first I have to know what a feeling actually is — and what it isn’t. Because most of what people call feelings aren’t feelings at all. They are thoughts. Narratives. Judgements. Dressed up in the language of emotion, but pointing outward rather than inward — toward other people, toward… Continue reading About my feelings →

My feelings know what I value before I do. They register the cost of a compromise before I’ve named what was compromised. They push back before I’ve decided to push back. That signal isn’t subtle. It’s the heaviness after saying yes to something that cost more than it should. The steadiness of holding a position… Continue reading About my values →

My body tells me when I’m hungry. When I’m tired. When I’ve been sitting too long or pushed past what I have. Those are needs speaking. And most of us have learned to hear them — eventually. The harder ones are the needs that don’t arrive with an obvious physical signal. The need for meaning.… Continue reading About my needs →

Think of a cash box. It holds something valuable. You don’t leave it open for anyone to reach into. You don’t throw the contents out to whoever asks. You’re intentional about what goes in, what comes out, and you protect what’s inside. A personal boundary works the same way. Not a wall, not a rule… Continue reading About my boundaries →

You walk into a room and feel it before anything has happened. Safe or unsafe. Welcoming or hostile. A person opens their mouth and you know — before they’ve finished the sentence — whether this is going somewhere good or bad. That isn’t intuition. That’s a filter. What a filter is A filter is a… Continue reading About my filters →

Something either fits or it doesn’t. Not logically — not yet. Just a quiet sense, arriving before the words do, that this is right or this isn’t mine. That’s truth speaking. Not facts. Not what I can prove. What actually fits with who I am. What truth is Personal truth is not about being correct.… Continue reading About my truth →

There is a particular kind of wrong that has no obvious cause. Life looks fine. Nothing is broken in any way that can be easily named. And yet something keeps signaling — a low hum of dissatisfaction, a sense of going through motions, a feeling of being slightly outside your own life without knowing how… Continue reading About my alignment →

The body responds before the mind has caught up. A tightening in the chest before I know I’m anxious. A heaviness that arrives before I’ve named what’s wrong. A sudden ease in the shoulders when something threatening turns out not to be. The stomach that drops before the thought forms. That isn’t incidental. The body… Continue reading About my body →

Nobody reveals a map to you when you meet them. But the feelings do. The ease that arrives with certain people before anything has been said. The low-level guardedness that doesn’t have a reason. The particular exhaustion after time with someone who takes more than they return. The specific warmth of being genuinely seen. These… Continue reading About my relationships →

Everyone has a story about who they are. Not the one they tell at dinner parties. The one that runs underneath — the accumulated conclusion about what they are capable of, what they deserve, what they can expect from others, and what kind of person they fundamentally are. Most people didn’t choose their story. It… Continue reading About my story →