A Simple Way to Change How You Feel

Deciding on rules that work for our situation can help make these decisions a little more rational and logical. Am I a bad person for falling in love with my cousin's ex-boyfriend? Am I a bad person for feeling something for Sam when I know I shouldn't? Am I a bad person for having a one-night stand and not feeling bad about it? Am I a bad person for covering my ex's car in dun paper? As part of my ongoing duty to lovingly bully you into loving you, I've listed some common Am I a Bad Person? Am I a bad person if I want to be single? This one is common among those who are in a Good Relationship, where things are going fine and look great on paper, you have fun together and there are no `issues' to speak of . This might mean free of your partner, or free to be with other people (some of whom might be terrible on paper, but terrific to look at and kiss), but usually it means free to be just you. It's normal to feel stressed when you are making dramatic changes in the present so that the future can be better, especially if the present is a relatively settled and happy time, but if you genuinely feel you need to fly solo for a while, then you must be courageous, and do what is necessary. If you stay because leaving seems too traumatic, you're not only postponing the inevitable, you're wasting precious time, both yours and your partner's. Apparently, he had been sexually abused as a child and had never told anyone. Although I most often see men shoving the energies of their uncomfortable emotions into women's overly receptive energetic boundary, it can just as easily happen the other way around. People can also act out this pattern with their same-sex partners, their friends, or their children. Anyone is capable of pushing away negative emotional energies, and anyone with permeable or gaping energy boundaries is susceptible to absorbing them. Many of us grew up in dysfunctional families, such as those characterized by alcoholism or other forms of substance abuse or by various types of neglect, sexual issues, or emotional or verbal abuse. These dysfunctional behaviors often lay the groundwork for unhealthy emotional energetic boundaries. For example, my own parents were both alcoholics, although my father took the lead. Night after night, he sat and drank martinis to avoid dealing with his feelings. Because I loved him, I would absorb the feelings he was refusing to feel, like his sadness, fears, and anger.

I'd also pick up the emotions of everyone else in my family. It might be that all three factors are important, or it might be that there is only one limiting factor. How long it takes to find a replacement might not be important so long as it costs less than $20. Or perhaps the item needs to be replaceable within twenty minutes, and the cost needs to be under $100. Think about what is realistic for your time, your living situation and your budget, and refer back to this when you feel a little stuck. If reducing waste is important to you then a fourth factor might be more relevant than the other three: Can I replace it without buying it new? Maybe time, distance and money don't matter so long as a replacement can be found second-hand. In truth, the majority of things that you decide you don't need, you won't need. Having a back-up policy can help overcome those niggling doubts when deciding whether or not to let things go. As tempting as it can be to buy shelving units, storage boxes, folders and binders, new labels, coloured pens - whatever it is that you have your eye on to help get your stuff `in order' - don't make that purchase! Decluttering is about letting go of the unnecessary stuff, not hiding it or disguising it. Also, you might end up doing something stupid, like cheating, or being an arsehole so your partner dumps you. Which is a real jerk move. The sooner you rip the bandaid off, the sooner the healing begins. Fear is simply the precursor of growth. Am I a bad person for sleeping around? Recently, women realised that we were allowed to have no-strings sex and not feel bad about it. That, amazingly, we didn't burst into flames if we chose to enjoy sex but leave all the commitment, guilt and shame out of the equation. Despite this newfound confidence and sexual liberty, some women still feel some level of post-coital guilt and self-flagellation seep in. Perhaps it's because we have been conditioned to think of women as `slutty' when they enjoy casual sex (while men are `legends'), or perhaps it's something more personal for you, but in either case, if you're feeling bad about having purely physical hook-ups, take a moment to ask why:

Is it because they make you feel empty the next day? I knew who was sad and who was glad, who hated his or her job (like my dad did) and who didn't. Subsequently, I was constantly full of tangled emotions and feelings I couldn't figure out. I couldn't sort my own feelings from everyone else's. Not only did I lack the emotional energetics necessary to screen out others' feelings, but other violations at home also set me up to take on everyone's everything, including their thoughts, needs, dreams, and responsibilities. Lack of emotional energetics can make it hard to stand on our own legs. Emotions are power. They are the energy in motion, or energy that moves us along in life. If we absorb others' emotions, we'll become drained and unmotivated because we lack the fuel of our own emotions. I once worked with a young woman who was so emotionally damaged that she couldn't even make a decision by herself. Her mother was an extremely wealthy woman, but she was also a helicopter mom, hovering over her daughter to such an extent that she pulled her out of thirteen schools in ten years because she didn't like how her daughter was treated. Buying stuff is easy. Decluttering stuff is harder. We've got the `buying stuff' habit nailed; The `letting go of stuff' habit - that's the one we need to work on. The need to feel like we are making progress can be met with the act of buying stuff. Alas, it is the opposite of progress. If decluttering is something you struggle with, and you know you have a hard time letting things go, why would you consider buying more stuff as a solution? Feeling like we are making progress is not the same as making progress. We can't buy our way to less stuff.

We can't organise our way to less stuff. Is it because you fear being judged? Is it because you worry about your reputation? Is it because you know deep down you are doing it out of loneliness, or retribution to an ex, or because you have an emotional void to fill? Or does some part of you wonder how you can be doing this so easily and not feel any guilt? As long as you are confident and mature enough to understand the implications of casual sex - and not just the physical ones, but the emotional ones, such as how you feel when they don't call you afterwards or, conversely, when they do call afterwards and you need to tactfully explain to them that you're not looking for anything further - then there is no reason for you to beat yourself up over it. You're a mature adult doing a mature adult thing. And most definitely not a bad person. Am I a bad person for wanting to get sexy with someone I shouldn't? Whether it's your friend's partner, or your husband's buddy, or your high school teacher, your very happily married boss, or Justin Bieber, we all feel forbidden urges. Don't fight it! The truth was that every time her daughter got a little gumption, her mother would lash out at her, rage around the house, and pull her out of the school, teaching her how to be insolent in the process. The daughter had almost no personality and had become extraordinarily lazy. Why try to do anything when it's just going to hurt your mother's feelings? Any friends she made treated her exactly the same way her mother did, pulling the stuffing right out of her. She began reacting to any changes in the environment, from sunspots to the slightest bloom of flowers to changes in the feelings of her one close friend, her dog. The emotional abuse was so critical that the girl's boundaries were a complete, flopping mess. Fortunately, she responded to some of the techniques I taught her, and she became bold enough to begin therapy when she was in college. Emotional injuries can occur from almost any situation, but they always accompany physical violations. An adult who was sexually abused as a child, for instance, will have not only degenerated physical energetic boundaries, but also damaged emotional energetic boundaries.

So will an adult who, while ill as a child, was ignored for long amounts of time during recovery or never visited in the hospital after surgery. The only way we will make progress with decluttering is by actually letting stuff go. More storage is not the answer to too much stuff. Less stuff is the answer to too much stuff. If you don't have much stuff to start with, you're ruthless in your approach, completely determined, keen to put the rest of your life on hold as you tackle this challenge, and you're happy to take action fast with the things you no longer need, you'll be able to progress fairly quickly. If you have a lot of stuff to work through and prefer a more considered approach, taking the time to find the absolute best new homes for your unwanted items, the journey will take a lot longer. Whichever path you end up taking, do not underestimate the time you will need. Decluttering your home of everything you no longer love or need is not a process that you will complete in a single afternoon. Keeping spaces clutter-free is not a case of tidying the whole house and thinking, `Right, I'm never letting it get messy again! I have no idea what made me think that I could go from messy person to tidy person following one weekend of cleaning. As a minimum, you'll likely need to allow yourself six months to tackle everything. Let the fantasy come, and then let it go. The key is not to make a big deal of it, or tell your brain it's not allowed (your brain will just fixate on it to annoy you) and definitely and most vitally: DO NOT ACT ON IT. Enjoy it in the privacy of your own head, don't let it fester into a full-blown obsession, and for the love of llamas, don't act on it. Am I a bad person for breaking someone's heart? There will be times in your life when you have to hurt people who don't deserve to be hurt. You might procrastinate leading up to it - some do for years - but in your heart and in your gut you know it must be done. It might be that someone has fallen for you but you don't feel the same way, or you want to end your (pleasant but dull) relationship, but your partner has no idea what's coming. Whatever the case, this is one of those Life Moments that calls for you to step up and understand that even though what you're doing feels very much like the wrong thing, it's actually the right thing. Staying with someone out of obligation is a treacherous act.