Week 7

I will admit to being someone who has “conversations in an upward spiral of increasing defensiveness.” But I’m getting better, I swear! Why is that? Because I hate how I feel afterwards, you can’t come back from it, mostly I end up going to bed angry and who likes that? Hmm, I’ve never heard of the arsenic hour, but that makes sense. You’re hungry, you’ve finally gotten off of work but then had to drive home through traffic and you come home and it’s like a match to a dry field. Perhaps I shouldn’t communicate with anyone (husband in particular) between 3 and 6:30.

Ooo, the step of being silent should be accompanied by open posture, otherwise you appear very closed off.

Well now I’m just confused. I thought I wasn’t assertive at all, but the “natural assertions” that Bolton talks about are phrases that I use all the time. Perhaps it’s my tone, it has to be my tone, since clearly I’m working everything right. Oh yeah, being assertive after an attack is very challenging, especially after a passive aggressive attack. Shut down city for Rachael.

Ooo, toxic relationship, I’ve had two and severed both of them, one a couple years ago and another a couple months ago. They were different levels of toxicity, yet they both thought they knew more than me in every matter and thus felt the need to control my life and were extremely judgmental. I didn’t need that in my life so those individuals are gone from it. It would take a lot to go back to that person and try again.

I have such a hard time saying no, both for my personal life and at work. Which is proof to why I get bogged down by so much stuff. Not surprising that my mind is in the state that it is. Why do people have such a hard time saying no? I should realize that I’m taking on too much, right? But I keep insisting to myself that I can add another thing to my to-do list, no problem! In the end everything seems to suffer, or the majority of it is very eh but I have one good thing. At this point in my life I just keep saying to myself “You’ll be done in December, you’ll be done in December,” but who am I kidding? I’m just going to take on even more stuff to replace all of my school work.