Category: boundaries
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To be seen
The thing we want most is to be seen in our fullest,” says David Brooks, The New York Times columnist. “The thing we fear most is to be seen at our fullest.” I heard Brooks speak recently at Arts & Letters Live in Dallas. His new book is How to Know a Person—The Art of…
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My bodily autonomy?!
Former Vice President Pence wants to implement a nationwide ban on abortion and to continue the fight “to restrict bodily autonomy.” Bodily autonomy is “the right to governance over one’s own body.” Yikes! Former Vice President Pence has no right to restrict my bodily autonomy—or the bodily autonomy of any woman. –Joy
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A joyful resting place
We long to be at home in the world, Norman Wirzba once wrote. “Our failure—as evidenced in flights to virtual worlds and the growing reliance on ‘life enhancing’ drugs, antidepressants, antacids and stress management techniques—suggests a pervasive unwillingness or inability to make this world a home, to find our places and communities, our bodies and…
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No news—for a few days
Recently, before we left for Arkansas, I declared a ban on news. I didn’t want to hear anything about what was happening in Washington. But, news today seeps through our cell phones, and a complete ban was impossible. Still, it was refreshing to avoid the blare of news hounding me constantly from newspapers, radio and…
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The distracted adult syndrome
Too much screen time is bad for children, says Dr. Nicolas Kardaras, author of Glow Kids: How Screen Addiction is Hijacking Our Kids—and How to Break the Trance. In fact, Dr. Kardaras concludes, that brain imaging studies show that excessive screen exposure can damage a young person’s developing brain in the same way that cocaine…
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How did I build better boundaries?
I wish I had a simple answer. I don’t. For most of life’s big issues, there are simple answers that provide a glimpse of the truth. And, then, there are long answers that reveal the truth. I built better boundaries by getting to know myself, figuring out who I was and what I wanted to…
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What I learned about boundaries
When I was a child, we ate a farm breakfast before we rushed out of the house to catch the school bus—eggs and bacon or sometimes biscuits and gravy. At the same time that my brothers and I were climbing into the school bus, my parents were leaving the house and starting their daily chores.…
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Do you have good boundaries?
Many women come to me for counseling because they have bad boundaries. Some of them didn’t develop good boundaries as the result of physical abuse when they were children. They may have had parents who hit them, slapped them or said mean things to them. Even women who were never abused often are encouraged to…
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Complain carefully
Julie, a woman who has developed good boundaries, knows that it’s healthy to confide in a close friend about problems she’s having with her supervisor at work. Talking to someone about how she feels about a colleague who was given a promotion that she thinks she deserves helps diffuse her anger. It also might help…