LET’S GROW

Here is an example from my life.

I have a friend that I love spending time with. The issue we ran into was that she would consistently flake on plans with me. She would sometimes not even call or text to tell me she couldn’t make it. This made me not only really upset, but also caused me to devalue myself. 

I would assume the reason she was so flaky was that she didn’t want to spend time with me. I thought to myself that, because she didn’t make the effort to let me know she wasn’t coming, she didn’t respect me; therefore, I wasn’t valuable to her. I separated from her and harbored frustration and sadness over it for a while. 

Not long after that I started therapy, my therapist pointed out that I have a habit of personalizing. He asked me to think about a scenario where I may have personalized and I immediately thought of her. He told me one of the biggest ways to combat personalization is communication, so I reached out to her.