Stage fright was the most important fear I’ve ever faced, and my greatest lifelong fear. As a child I was constantly pushed onto stages to perform at talent shows and other events despite the overwhelming anxiety I would experience, so when I gained autonomy as an adult I stayed as far away from stages as possible. I chose work like photography and being an interviewer that kept me behind the scenes and out of the spotlight. Standing in front of people to speak or perform was the last thing I desired for myself. I probably would have stayed in that comfort zone my entire life if my love for this cause and humanity didn’t give me the drive I needed to use my voice. Ironically, I would now consider public speaking and performing to be what I do best! Overcoming this fear has unexpectedly opened up a whole new world for me, connecting me with gifts I didn’t know I had and sides of myself I never knew existed. Tomorrow I will post a video of myself facing my stage fright. Is there a fear you faced that ended up being a catalyst for major growth and positive change in your life? Please share your answer in the comments. #ReclaimYourVoice
Before I get to the question, there’s something I want to touch on that I hope can become a common practice: getting people’s *consent* before opening up to them about our pain. Trauma can complicate things and there may be times when we can’t stop the words from coming out, but for those times when we are able to, it’s important to check in with someone before having discussions with them about serious subject matter. We never know what someone might be going through in their lives, or how our story might trigger them, or how they simply may not be in the right place that day to listen and hold space. Not only does this help us to not negatively impact their wellbeing, but it’s a safety measure for ourselves as well; opening up and talking about our trauma requires making ourselves vulnerable and if we don’t receive the support we need and deserve through that process, it can be retraumatizing. It’s a good practice to ask someone, “Are you in the right mental space to hear this right now?” and to be clear about the type of support you are hoping to receive before talking about your experiences.
Regarding the question posted here, what happened when you first told someone your story? Why did you decide to talk about it? Who did you tell? How did they respond and how did you feel? Please comment below if you are comfortable contributing to the conversation.
“Understanding the difference between “niceness” & kindness”♡
How do I fix my “performative “niceness”
Think about “performative niceness” as a bit of a self soothing habit. It always used to feel validated in the fact that we are nice people. Decent people. Almost like feeding your ego but I believe that performative niceness is in most instances stems from people pleasing.
“What is people pleaser?”
A people pleaser is something that’s defined by Merriam-Webster as “a person who has an emotional need to please others often at the expense of his or her own desires”
This habit can stem from parenting or anything that in a sense lowers someone self-esteem. A lack of self confidence will send someone to look outside of themselves for validation.
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“Performative niceness” may also push you to limit your response to things you don’t like or don’t find generally agreeable.Remember to ask yourself if not speaking up or using your clear communication skills and establishing clear boundaries is honoring yourself and respecting yourself or further digging yourself into a hole.
Determine if exuding “niceness” rather than “kindness” is really what you should be doing. Niceness is a sense empty. It doesn’t stem out of anything truly genuine. Someone who is genuinely a horrible person or lacks morals can easily be “nice” to someone they come across in the grocery store but moving out of their way, or letting them cut them in line.
For example, because I know this is something you can all relate to or understand. Is that “nice” guy you know really a genuinely nice guy or he just portrays to others that he is nice to achieve something or not be held accountable for his lack of respect and human decency towards the women in his life or that he chases after? Exactly.
If you’re subconsciously asking yourself or wondering if others think your “kindness” is enough, it’s probably not true kindness. Kindness stems from sitting with yourself and honestly and truly deciding to do what’s best for others because you truly care.
I do not have to be “nice” if I don’t want to. But I am kind because I have others best interest in mind and dedicate my life and my time to helping people overcome the things that they are struggling with. Not because I need that validation but because I simply want to and want the world to be a better place.
Hope this was a helpful piece. Follow my aesthetic page @cooki3face on Instagram for coquette black girl aesthetics and more. <3
Love you so much, good morning, good evening, or good night. Hope you’re doing well.
My YOLA logs prove that I don’t usually do write ups that I post during the Capricorn Moon. I tend to think they may be too dark and gloomy for others. And my wounded inner self has a habit of withholding such information due to “shadow fearing” that is commonplace in humanity. But she is unlearning ‘cause a true Moon woman knows that her the Luna Goddess fluctuates in nature, therefore a first rule of moon engagement is never, never deny her phases nor hide her faces.
Today I shift with the Moon and rest in the melancholy, gloomy and pessimistic side of this Saturn influenced Moon and how Capricorn Moon days can sometimes mix up feelings with business. The current Sun shy weather coincides. So if you’re experiencing a downshift in the feeling spectrum then I am confirming that you are not alone and you are on Moon point. Don’t despair. It is the Capricorn Moon nipping at your heart. Plus Pluto’s influence can tint this Moon time with a blend of gloom and doom. Sucks right? But don’t fight it! Breathe and be right….with it!
The Moon just went over my natal Sun and transiting Pluto in my 4th house and has been illuminating and taking me back to my roots. Conversations with my ancestors, childhood memories resurfacing; the feeling of repressed trauma awakening in an effort to be released; reflections on “home” and what it means to me while honoring the need to be by myself. It’s a deep call from beyond to “go home”. And a sneaky feeling that this world does not feel like home.
Yesterday I read a story of an unsuccessful suicide attempt of an African American female doctor. It was during the Capricorn Moon and now I see the need to define suidice attempts as “a call to go home”.
The experience of any Moon placement will depend directly on the area of your life (chart) it is moving through and its aspects to other planets. You may certainly not be having a “home, mother, family or roots experience like I am having with my Capricorn 4th house Sun, but you are definitely dancing with the Moon - conscious or not!
I promise you that how ever you are feeling, it will soon lift when the Moon shifts into Aquarius later tonight. Meanwhile it’s a great day to plan, organize and be with the Moon Funk tunes.
SUN, MOON, MERCURY & VENUS in CANCER says let’s TALK about the FEELINGS and the DARK side of our RELATIONSHIPS and the way we do MONEY. Let’s not hide them in the SHADOWS. Feeling horrible? Don’t hide it. Feeling lonely? Don’t try to hide it! Feeling upset? Ride it!!!
Truth is ALL our FEELINGS are birthed in the SHADOWS until they are expressed, out in motion. Feelings derive from our shadow, unconscious world. It is the expression, the movement of those instinctual sensations that honors the heart Energy’s need to be in Motion. (E-Motion) Problems develop the moment we begin to hold them in for FEAR of something we have imagined.
You can RUN from whatever, or whomever triggered those FEELINGS but you can’t HIDE from them or from yourself.
Example: a longtime Facebook friend. After writing a review for my book, and I extended the discussion on promoting it with her, She agreed to one of my ideas but choked on the second one. This one turned the light on her SHADOW. I could feel it although we were miles apart. She was uncomfortable with my request for reasons created and held by her SHADOW. But instead of her focusing on the FEELINGS that surfaced from deep within her, instead of expressing how it made her FEEL or what came up for her she flipped the script on me! I could literally see her emotional demons swirling around her vying for her sincere attention. She instead turned it on me and criticized my asking. EMOTIONAL AVOIDANCE - a moon dis-ease many many women suffer from.
So she chose to UNFRIEND me without saying anything to me. Now that is hilariously SHADOWY!! Insincere, shady & femininely treacherous. For You can NOT eliminate the TRIGGER person! I triggered her deep SHADOWY emotions but she had no clue. She only reacted from the very same SHADOW place. She saw it as me and not her. How many of us are guilty of that?
EMOTIONAL DODGING!!!
This stellium in CANCER offers us a chance to MATURE EMOTIONALLY. I believe that is what MOTHERHOOD is meant to teach us….for our children pull out and challenge our own emotional inner child and we often times react from our childlike selves. EMOTIONAL E-DISCIPLINE, E-MATURITY, E-WISDOM are fundamental to our WELL BEING!
Be WISE with the FEELINGS!
Try not to Project Instead…REFLECT! We have so much to learn about our FEMININE ESSENCE - we are so far behind, remaining in the Dark. We need to catch up with our MOON selves!! The Cancer Season is here to guide us!!
The true nature of empathy, atonement, and kindness are not always meant to be passive, yielding, peaceful and sweet.
At times they will take on wrathful forms, reckless words, hard hitting truths but if sincere they always remain grounded in love.
Authentic compassion is not always soft, surrendering or simple. It has a fierce and fiery side to it that comes from the flame of the heart …which is fire, not water.
We mistake kindness for weakness. We think love pain free and shadow less. We think the light is the only way and so we stumble and get lost when darkness falls.
We are misaligned with the experiences of our emotions. We misunderstand its language and miss it’s clues. We learn to deny and regret them, push them down and refuse them. When this happens we overtax and bombard the mind by forcing it to hold what the heart needs to let go of and express!
My job offers a lot of opportunities for career and personal development. Right now, I’m taking a mini course on potential. The first week, we talked about energy and emotional potential. I want to focus on emotional potential.
I know anyone that struggles with mental illness understands the battle between the rational and emotional mind.
I’m reading “Emotional Intelligence” by Daniel Coleman again. I remember one of my psychology professors recommended it to me in college while working with him during an independent study. If you are a psych nerd like myself or just interested in the topic, I highly recommend.
Parts of the book focuses on “first feelings, second thoughts” and as someone that struggles with intrusive, obsessive thought patterns it helps me understand how my mind works at times.
“…with emotion feeding into and informing the operations of the rational mind, and the rational mind refining and sometimes vetoing the inputs of the emotions.”
Therapy definitely helped me understand how to sort through and process intrusive thoughts because they used to turn into compulsive behaviors to soothe them. The behaviors were temporary fixes without getting to the root of the problem.
Reading this book again reminds me of how important emotional intelligence is with not only understanding ourselves, but also society as a whole.
Becoming less reactive is a big part of growth & decreasing stress. Sometimes this type of avoidance can be looked at as lack of interest or uncaring, but it isn’t. If you let everything get you worked up, you’re damaging your mind, body & soul
Anon wrote: INTP here. What can make a capable and ambitious (school) student suddenly change into a depressed, uninterested and confused college student and then a graduate who doesn’t have energy and motivation to find a job in a related field? I am that person. I was a good student and my teachers thought I was going to get accepted in a good college and would have a bright future.
Well, it didn’t happen. I studied something a bit less ideal, and didn’t like it at all. Decided to finish it (as others suggested), graduate, and study something I liked. I graduated even though those years were some of the worst years of my life. Then I realized most of my classmates were interested in our field and were going to find jobs, while I was confused, thinking about what to do next, and COVID made things even worse! Now I think others my age are ahead of me. I am trying to get myself out of the inertia, find something I like and go back to college. But I’m internally devastated and lack energy.
During school years, I was ambitious, a bit shy, but still ok at dealing with people and I had more self confidence. I believed in myself and knew I could do things if I tried. But now I have this internal belief that I can’t do anything while others can, no matter what that thing is. It can be studying, taking a test, going out of the house, socializing, going to a party, etc. I always focus on myself internally, analyze myself and try to imagine what people are thinking about me (and it’s usually a negative thing). To the point that even a simple task like going out, talking to people on the phone, shopping or going to the bank can seem extremely stressful for me.
I keep hearing from my family that I don’t make friends, don’t socialize enough, can’t find a job, can’t do stuffs, am shy and anxious… and this makes things worse. As if I internally lack something that others, specially people my age have. My life looks like a teenager’s life, but without the hope, self-belief and ambition I had during those years. I either avoid things, or get my family to do it for me. I really want to save myself and get out of this inertia, and the belief that I am not capable. I wish I could be mentally healthy, out of my head, more easy going and less anxious, just like my teenage years.
I just can’t find out when, why and how I became mentally unhealthy, introspective, judgemental, sensitive, thin-skinned and unconfident. I’m on antidepressants, but still can’t even get myself to go to a psychologist, as I’m shy, avoidant and afraid of being judged or used by them. How can I get out of inertia and negativity cycle? Could you please give me some tips?
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1) Due to the mental health issues, I would need to confirm your type, because too much of what you describe doesn’t fit well with the INTP functional stack. I require a detailed explanation to account for the inconsistencies. When I am unsure of someone’s type, I refrain from addressing the specifics of their type development. Since I can’t be sure that your problems aren’t linked to function development issues, the most I can say at present is that you need to develop your auxiliary function to get out of tertiary loop, as anyone in a loop does.
2) It is somewhat puzzling and concerning that, as Ti dom, you are unable to pinpoint the cause of your problems on your own. You already gave the answer to your first question here: “I studied something a bit less ideal, and didn’t like it at all.” How can you feel motivated when you are putting most of your time into something you dislike or something uninspiring? Motivation comes from how you FEEL, your DESIRES, and your PASSIONS. You gave up your motivation by making the wrong choices for your future, choices that ignored how you felt, downplayed your desires, and/or silenced your passions. You suppressed the very things you needed.
3) To err is human. If you were capable once, you didn’t “lose” it, it’s still in your brain. Instead of lamenting past mistakes or getting stuck in the past and wasting even more time, learn from it. What decisions must you make NOW in order to turn your life around? Why do you care so much about what others think? It’s not their life. Stop obsessing about what others are doing or waiting for someone to tell you what to do and live your life the way you need to. It seems you need to work on your independence by making your own decisions, formulating goals and plans, and carrying them out. It is up to you to start choosing the things that you really need and want to do for yourself and your well-being. You won’t find what you like/want until you get out in the world to experiment and learn more about yourself.
4) Just as your body needs you to care for it in order to be healthy, your mind and heart require care and love as well. Your mind can’t be healthy when you don’t listen to your negative feelings and thereby fail to make the changes that they are telling you are necessary for being happy. Your heart can’t be healthy when you have no love in your life for anyone, not even yourself, and no connection to anything outside of yourself. Shop around for a therapist that you can form a healthy and comfortable relationship with - you are the one in control and should tell the therapist what you need to learn from them to make your life better. Take steps to improve your emotional awareness, emotional intelligence, self-care practices, and social skills. See past posts and the recommended books on the topics.
Anon wrote: I have observed a thing in me, I’m Infj and sometimes i get really hostile and too questionable and challenging in arguments. Or even to explain an issue i use personal examples and correlations that might not need to be connected but seem logically similar to me. The problem is i don’t want to be harsh, hostile i want to be able to gently reason like Jane Goodall as you typed her Infj.
As others get offended and have rebuked me for my tone of arguing. I really hate this in me. My intention is not to hate someone but my way of explaining it; making people realise a different view point comes across really disagreeable. While i try to be balanced now and then but sometimes when i get emotionally involved then i want to have gentle tone in such situations as well.
My intj sibling seems more socially appropriate than me, even though in generalised way Fe users are who take outside objective value judgements. My sibling just shows an expression of shock and disapproval at my way of correlation reasoning, even when i am not harsh, my way of say using someone’s personal cause they relate with to explain a cause they don’t, seems and sounds harsh to my intj sibling.
I tell myself that it is because i have poor communication skill, need self management but unless I’m angry i am unable to be direct, clear and get interrupted, confused, questioned often. I’ve a very effacing, gentle tone when calm, but i don’t give very articulate and precise points then. I really don’t like how i speak, feel guilty and ashamed at the same time. Esp when my sibling gets offended and disapproves of me i feel ashamed of my self and want to change all such things in me. What would you suggest?
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Jane Goodall stands confidently in her knowledge and skills. She uses truth rather than anger to change minds. Can you say the same? There are several issues to unpack:
1) Ti loop Problems: Ti loop enables a harsh, critical, and disapproving attitude. Tertiary temptation is labeled as such because it tempts you with a false sense of power that is ultimately self-sabotaging and even self-destructive in extreme cases. Power is addictive to people who feel powerless, victimized, disenfranchised, inadequate, or inferior. While it feels good to use the power of Ti loop in the moment as a means to cover up your negative feelings, in reality, it only poisons your mind and exposes the worst aspects of who you are, hence the guilt and shame. If you don’t want to rely on Ti loop to conduct your life, then you have to be willing to i) give up the false sense of power it grants you, ii) confront the deeper psychological problems that fuel your addiction to power, and iii) commit yourself fully to proper Fe development. It’s your choice to make.
2) Low Emotional Intelligence: Anger can be a productive emotion, if and only if you know what to do with it. It is sadly the case that most people are just hijacked by anger into revenge or retaliation. Once your mind is emotionally hijacked, you’re not being rational, you’re not being your best self, and you certainly don’t have the presence of mind to work toward positiveoutcomes with people. Anger is a justifiable response to the harm of injustice, unfairness, inequality, or moral violations. But is attacking people the right way to address these problems? As much as you try to convince yourself otherwise, two wrongs don’t make a right. Vengefulness only adds more hurt to the situation, and, worse, vengeful action means that you are perpetuating the cycle of violence and becoming a part of the problem yourself, hence the guilt and shame. A person with good emotional intelligence will not be hijacked by anger but, rather, take the anger as a sign that something is wrong and use the anger as motivation to come up with the right way to address the problem. As long as you remain enamored with the power that anger grants you to dominate and control the people you disapprove of, you put yourself at great risk of losing your moral compass. Another point you might want to consider is that, if you are easily hijacked by emotion, it is also exceedingly easy for others to manipulate your anger and use it for their own nefarious ends.
3) Low Self-Awareness: People who go on “moral crusades” like to believe that they’re righting a wrong. However, when you observe the methods they choose and the negative results they get, it becomes obvious that what they’re really doing is feeding their own ego dramas. Perhaps they’re trying to cover up their own hurt, helplessness, or inadequacy. Perhaps they want to prove something about themselves to the world. Perhaps they want glory, fame, or fortune to satiate their greed. The point is that their moral crusade is really about ego and they don’t realize it. Their intentions aren’t noble and, unfortunately, their self-deception not only harms themselves but others as well. Someone who truly cares about a moral cause acts out of compassionand will humbly and diligently choose the best methods of advancing the cause. They would use good critical thinking skills to carefully prepare their case, plan out their method of engagement, and learn from their mistakes about what works or doesn’t work to get people on board. Their intentions are honorable. Their emotions aren’t out of control. They channel hurt into empathy. They channel anger into passion. Do you have the self-awareness to check your intentions before you act upon people?
I have written about these topics before, so do a search.
And when Hozier said “I couldn’t utter my love when it counted. Ah, but I’m singing like a bird ‘bout it now. I couldn’t whisper when you needed it shouted. Ah, but I’m singing like a bird 'bout it now”
When SYML said “If you’re scared, I’m on my way. Did you run away? Did you run away, I don’t need to know. If you ran away. If you ran away, come back home. Just come home.”
And when Hozier said “I woke with her walls around me……She never asked me once about the wrong I did.”
the word empathy is WIDELY misused, even in mental health spaces.
empathy:
is responding to a person’s emotions by experiencing the same emotion as them (i.e. feeling sad when something sad happens to that person, or happy when something happy happens to that person.)
is an automatic response that cannot be controlled
cannot be learned
sympathy:
is recognizing that another person is in pain, even if you do not experience that pain, and offering comfort to that person
is something a person must actively choose to do
can be learned
compassion:
is showcasing care and support via words and actions
is something a person must actively choose to do
can be learned
if you need an example of a person with no empathy who practices sympathy and compassion, look no further than data from star trek: the next generation. he doesn’t have emotions at all, but he’s still kind to people and wants to help them.
stop telling people that they’re evil because they don’t experience empathy. stop equating empathy with morality. stop equating empathy with caring. stop saying that cruel people “lack empathy.” stop throwing neurodivergent and mentally ill people under the bus.
Thematically speaking, the most important thing Terry Pratchett taught me was the concept of militant decency. The idea that you can look at the world and its flaws and its injustices and its cruelties and get deeply, intensely angry, and that you can turn that into energy for doing the right thing and making the world a better place. He taught me that the anger itself is not the part I should be fighting. Nobody in my life ever said that before.
