My 2021 Survival Guide

Here are some of the most valuable lessons I learned in therapy and life in the past year.

Biggest Lessons from 2020

I learned some major things the hard way last year. These realizations helped me identify what I wanted to work on in 2021.

• Listen to your intuition
• Don’t love someone more than you love yourself
• Healthy relationships cannot exist without mutual trust and health boundaries
• Never put your happiness in someone else’s hands

Therapy Thoughts

My wonderful therapist taught me many things. Here are some of them:

• It is not my responsibility to live up to other people’s expectations of me
• Feelings are a reaction to needs being met or unmet
• When feeling a pleasant emotion, install it in your brain. What am I feeling? Where in my body do I feel it? What need is being met?
• You can’t have healthy boundaries if you don’t know what your boundaries are
• Assertive communication template: “I feel ______ when _____ happens.”
  -Assertive communication — I care about my needs and others
  -Passive communication — I care about everyone else’s needs
  -Aggressive communication — I only care about my needs
• Check out this non-violent communication feelings inventory. This list can help you identify needs and feelings so boundaries can be established.
• Non-violent communication creates a space for psychological safety
• Allow and accept that honest conversations may be awkward, and that’s ok
• Resentment means there is hurt and something needs to be understand
• Accepting vulnerability means initiating hard conversations and listening to the responses. This gives us a chance to talk about feelings, identify your needs and feelings, and see how it feels in your body.
• Allowing the awkwardness that comes with being vulnerable promotes psychological safety, which leads to intimacy
• Shame disconnects us and makes us judge ourselves. Write down the lies you tell yourself related to shame. What are things that make you vulnerable from your past/present? Then, write a list of evidence against every lie.
• Our thoughts are real, but we are not our thoughts
• Practice observing your mind. Realize that not every thought you think is true. Thoughts take our past experiences and attempt to predict the future.
• Practice self-observation from a curious and compassionate place
• Somatic practice: feel sensations in your body, notice when emotions arise and when you want to retreat/make up a story about your emotions rather than just being with them
• Trauma stays in the body (Read The Body Keeps Score)
• When you acknowledge and name your feelings, you can tame it. This leads to emotional regulation

Emotional Regulation

Some tips from my therapist for regulating emotions during stressful times:

• Belly breathing into your lower lungs (longer exhale) helps soothe the nervous system and activates the vagal nerve. By stimulating the vagus nerve, you’re sending a message to your body that it’s time to relax and de-stress
• Singing, humming, chanting, sighing and gargling
• Stretching, yoga, moving your body. Try to get at least 30 minutes of elevated heart rate four times a week
• Hugging yourself, arm compressions (squeezing your arms), and tapping

Relationships

• Detangling what is ours and what belongs to others when it comes to our self-worth is necessary to have conscious relationships
• Any good relationship is going to give you the opportunity to grow together
• Look at conflict as an opportunity to dig deeper
• The few key realistic expectations you can bring into a relationship:
  -mutual trust
  -mutual admiration
  -mutual respect
  -desire for safety
• Relationship is a dance between:
  -being your own person
  -having your own likes/dislikes and desires
  -having connection
• When entering a relationship, ask yourself: how am I willing to be treated?
• Remember: the right people for you won’t be scared away by your boundaries. Not setting those boundaries and upholding them is self-betrayal.
• If we don’t spend time with our pain, we never learn from it
• “Your wounds make the best teachers” — John Roedel
• What are your core values in relationships? Write out a list.
• Our core values guide us and act as a map
• Establishing our boundaries & core values allows us to curate the people/relationships/environments that we’re willing to be with/around
• We can have compassion AND boundaries

What are some things you learned this year?