5 Resolutions I’m Making to Improve my Relationships
Ugh, I allowed myself to fall into a bad relationship pattern again. As someone who spent the majority of her adult life grappling with depression and anxiety, I’ve alternated between extended periods where I felt like I was walking through a wall of Jell-o and running through a swarm of angry bees. When you are flipping between these two states regularly you can’t help but fall into negative patterns of behavior in relationships because you are deeply disconnected from yourself. And yes, I’ve done a lot of healing, but I still have some deep neural pathways in my brain to rewire.
Most recently, I was altogether too empathetic to someone from high school who reached out because he was experiencing high levels of anxiety. Let’s call him Joe. The pandemic had thrown him for a loop mentally, and he knew that I had some experience in this field. I walked him about the coping mechanisms that had helped me through my darkest times, and we spoke almost daily over the next month. It was great, I had my friend back! Nothing could possibly go wrong!
Until it did. I had bought my friend a journal to assist him with his journey and when I asked when I could drop it off his text response was, “I don’t know how I’d explain [the journal] to my wife, haha.” When I asked if his wife knew that I existed, he replied in the negative. “Ok,” I…
