Very useful and interesting and capable of being explored and adapted, I think.
Internal pressure is often externalized and disavowed.
Most of us have a strong tendency to blame others for how we’re feeling. Consider the moments in which you chastised your friend or spouse for making you feel angry or for guilt-tripping you. In our minds, the lever that controls our emotions resides elsewhere, with others, as though we aren’t, to some extent, agents of our own thoughts and feelings.
And much of the time, our own agency largely remains unconscious. But think about feelings and their relationships with our interpretations and expectations. What if you didn’t expect yourself to constantly cater to a co-dependent partner? What if it isn’t your duty to resolve all of his problems? The internal pressure to become someone else’s savior matches with the external pressure to resolve another’s problems. Individuals who chronically complain pull for sympathy and aid, but there’s also a hard-wired part in many…
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penwithlit 