Blogs

1.28.2026

When “I Don’t Know” Blocks Connection: How to Deepen Emotional Conversations

In close relationships, few phrases can feel as confusing—or as distancing—as “I don’t know.” It can land as a full stop, leaving the listener unsure what to do next. But those three words rarely mean just one thing.

Often, “I don’t know” is a placeholder for something more tender, more complex, or not yet fully formed.

What “I Don’t Know” Might Actually Mean

When someone says “I don’t know,” they may be expressing:

• A literal lack of clarity: “I don’t understand this yet,” or “I’m not sure how to do this.”

• Confusion: “I’m still sorting out what I think or feel.”

• Protection or avoidance: “I’m afraid of being judged,” “I don’t want to create conflict,” or “If I say this out loud, I might be expected to act on it.”

• A polite no: “I don’t agree,” or “I’m not open to this right now.”

• Distrust: “I’m not sure this information will be safe with you.”

• Overwhelm or exhaustion: “I don’t have the capacity to think about this right now.”

• Defensiveness: “It doesn’t feel mutual or safe to share.”

• Indecision: “I haven’t decided yet,” or “I’m still processing.”

Seen through a nervous system lens, “I don’t know” is often less about withholding and more about the need for regulation before expression.

What Tends to Happen Next—and Why It Matters

When clarity is missing, the listener’s anxious mind may rush in to fill the gaps—often assuming the worst as a way to feel prepared. Over time, this can quietly build a story about the speaker that the speaker never had a chance to clarify.

This is how misunderstandings grow and often lead to disconnection, even when both people care deeply about the relationship.

If You’re the One Saying “I Don’t Know”

If speaking feels risky, “I don’t know” may be a way to buy time or stay safe. Rather than forcing clarity before it’s ready, consider sharing what does feel true and safe enough in the moment.

Even a small, honest offering can help soothe the listener’s anxious mind and keep connection intact.

For example:

• “I’m not sure yet. I know I feel overwhelmed.”

• “I don’t have words yet. I want to come back to this.”

If You’re the One Hearing “I Don’t Know”

Listeners can invite more depth without pressure by using a gentle start-up. One option might sound like:

“When I hear ‘I don’t know,’ my mind starts filling in the blanks, and I know my guesses aren’t always accurate. I don’t want us to feel more distant. What do you know that feels safe enough to share right now?”

This approach communicates curiosity rather than threat—and signals that the relationship can hold uncertainty.

A Simple Structure for Speaking Needs Clearly

When something matters to you, structure can help words land with less defensiveness. One helpful rhythm is:

“I feel… because… I need… to feel…”

For example:

“I feel frustrated because I’m handling all of the family packing on my own. I need help with the kids’ bags to feel settled and connected—like we’re a team preparing for this trip together.”

This format keeps the focus on experience and need, rather than blame.

Going Deeper: Naming the Dream, Drive, and Drag

Dr. Peter Pearson offers prompts designed to cut through confusion by naming:

• The dream (what you want)

• The drive (why it matters)

• The drag (what gets in the way)

You might try:

• “I strive to create the kind of relationship that… so that… even though…”

• “I strive to be the kind of partner who… so that… even though…”

These statements help clarify intention while honoring resistance, helping both partners clearly see what needs attention within the relationship.

Phrases That Keep Connection Intact

When tension is building, reminders of safety and teamwork can soften escalation. Borrowing from attachment-informed communication (and adapted here), these phrases often help pause conflict:

• “Can you help me understand what you’re feeling?”

• “I’m still processing—can we come back to this at a specific time?”

• “I need a moment to cool down so I can show up better for us.”

• “What you need matters just as much as what I need.”

• “We’re on the same team, even when we disagree.”

• “I trust you. Help me see what I might be missing.”

• “Tell me more—I want to really understand.”

• “How can we work through this so we both feel okay?”

A Gentle Reflection

As you read these, notice what your body responds to. Which phrases feel calming, relieving, or grounding? Those responses offer important information about what helps your nervous system feel safe in connection.

My hope is that these tools support deeper, steadier conversations with the people you care about—ones where curiosity replaces assumption, and honesty feels possible without fear.

1.3.2026

When Being the “Responsible Child” Shows Up as Anxiety

Learning to Stay One Step Ahead

Responsible children often became skilled at reading the room. They learned to notice subtle shifts in mood, tension, or tone—and to adjust quickly. This kind of attunement helped preserve connection and reduce conflict, especially when caregivers were stressed, unpredictable, or emotionally unavailable.

The nervous system learned that safety came from anticipation.

Anxiety as a Protective Strategy

Anxiety rooted in early responsibility isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s a form of protection. The body learned to stay alert, prepared, and responsive because it needed to. As an adult, this can show up as:

• • constant mental scanning

  • difficulty relaxing, even when things are “fine”

  • tension or urgency without a clear cause

  • worry that feels disproportionate but persistent

These patterns aren’t failures of will—they’re nervous system habits shaped by early experiences.

Listening to the Body

Anxiety is often most clearly felt in the body. You might notice:

• • tightness in the chest or throat

  • shallow breathing

  • digestive discomfort

  • a sense of internal pressure or readiness

Rather than trying to eliminate these sensations, somatic work invites curiosity. What is your body preparing for? What does it still believe is needed?

Attachment and Hyper-Awareness

When emotional safety wasn’t consistent early on, the nervous system may continue to monitor for signs of disconnection or danger. This can look like over-attuning to others, needing reassurance, or bracing for something to go wrong. This back-and-forth, unpredictable pattern of what connection will look like is the breeding ground for an anxious attachment stance.

These responses are understandable. They reflect a system that learned to stay close by staying alert.

Creating More Space Inside

Somatic EMDR and attachment-focused work help the nervous system differentiate between past and present. Through tracking sensation and supporting regulation, the body learns that it can:

• • notice activation without being overtaken by it

  • settle more easily after stress

  • respond from choice rather than reflex

This doesn’t remove anxiety altogether—it helps it soften and become more informative rather than consuming.

From Survival to Choice

When responsibility and anxiety have been intertwined for a long time, healing isn’t about getting rid of these parts of you. It’s about helping them relax. As your system learns that safety can exist in the present, vigilance no longer has to lead the way.

Dating, relationships, and everyday life begin to feel less like something to manage—and more like something you can participate in, believing that even you can receive care and love too.

1.3.2026

Why Tracking Sensation Heals Trauma: A Somatic Parts Work Approach

As you read this, you might pause for a moment and notice your body.
There’s no right way to do this. Simply observe—your breath, the weight of your body, or any place that draws your attention. This kind of noticing is not a technique to master. It’s a way of listening.

In somatic therapy-oriented Parts Work, we understand that the thing that makes a terrible experience trauma is that the nervous system doesn't believe the event is over--the body cannot separate past from present. Tracking sensation is one of the gentlest ways to begin creating change, because it meets your system exactly where it is in the present moment, beginning to untangle reflections of the past as observational, emotional, and thought experiences, not as being in the past itself.

Sensation Is How Parts Communicate

Before thoughts form, the body responds. A subtle tightening. A wave of heaviness. A pull to look away or lean in. These sensations are not random—they’re meaningful signals from parts of you that learned how to protect you.

When we track sensation, we’re not trying to get rid of anything. We’re slowing down enough to notice:

• • Where does your attention naturally go right now?

  • Is there movement, temperature, pressure, or stillness?

  • Does this sensation feel steady, shifting, or uncertain?

In Parts Work therapy, this kind of awareness helps protective parts feel recognized rather than challenged. Many parts relax not because they’re forced to, but because they’re finally being listened to. We will listen for names, ages, rules, and any known needs that each of these parts is willing to share with us as we attune.

Why Trauma Healing Involves the Body

Trauma often includes moments where the body wanted to act—move away, speak up, reach for help—but couldn’t. Those incomplete responses don’t disappear; they stay held as tension, shutdown, anxiety, or numbness. And in a parts perspective, perhaps a new rule was learned that the existing parts didn't know how to manage--the origin story of a new part.

By gently tracking sensation, we allow the nervous system to complete what was once interrupted. This may happen very quietly. A breath deepens. Muscles soften. There’s a subtle sense of more space inside.

Nothing needs to be pushed. The body knows how to pace itself when it feels safe enough.

From Protection to Internal Safety

As you continue to notice sensation with curiosity, something important begins to happen. Parts that once had to stay on high alert start to sense that the present moment is different from the past.

You may notice that:

• • Reactivity gives way to choice

  • Tension becomes information rather than alarm

  • Self-criticism softens into concern or care

This is nervous system regulation from the inside out. Not by overriding parts, but by helping them feel supported by the adult Self you are now.

Healing Happens in the Present Moment

Tracking sensation is not about reliving trauma or diving into painful memories. It’s about staying connected to now—to what your body is experiencing in real time, at a pace that feels manageable.

In somatic Parts Work, sensation becomes a bridge:

• • Between mind and body

  • Between past experience and present safety

  • Between survival strategies and new possibilities

Over time, your internal system begins to feel less fragmented and more cooperative. Healing doesn’t come from forcing change—it comes from sustained, compassionate attention.

And slowly, your body learns something new:
It doesn’t have to carry everything alone anymore.

12.31.2025

Decision-Making in Relationships: Learning to Choose From Safety, Not Survival

Many people don’t struggle with knowing what they want in relationships—they struggle with deciding. Choices that seem simple on the surface—Should I speak up? Stay? Leave? Ask for more? Pull back?—can feel overwhelming, urgent, or paralyzing.

This isn’t a character flaw. It’s often an attachment and nervous system response.

Why Relationship Decisions Can Feel So Hard

When early relationships required you to manage others’ emotions, anticipate rejection, or earn closeness through performance or caretaking, decisions in adult relationships can activate old survival patterns.

Your system may ask:

• • Will this upset them?

  • What if I’m asking for too much?

  • What if I lose the relationship?

  • What if I choose wrong and regret it forever?

In these moments, decisions aren’t being made from the present—they’re being made from the nervous system’s memory of past relational risk.

Survival-Based Decision-Making

When survival strategies are in charge, decisions tend to feel:

• • Urgent or all-or-nothing

  • Driven by guilt, fear, or obligation

  • Focused on preserving connection at the expense of Self (what I call self-abandonment)

  • Followed by second-guessing, resentment, or self-doubt

This can show up as people-pleasing, avoidance, over-functioning, or staying too long in relationships that no longer fit.

Again, this makes sense. These strategies once kept you safe, and we like safety; our brains prioritize remembering what keeps us safe.

Secure Decision-Making Emerges From Internal Safety

Healthy decision-making in relationships doesn’t come from forcing clarity or pushing yourself to “just decide.” It comes from internal safety.

When your nervous system feels regulated and supported, a different quality of choice becomes available. Decisions slow down. Options expand. You’re able to hold multiple truths at once—care for the relationship and for yourself.

From this place, decisions sound more like:

• • I can take time with this.

  • Both my needs and the relationship matter.

  • I’m allowed to change my mind.

  • I trust myself to respond as things unfold.

This is the voice of inner wisdom, not survival, and is the basis of interdependence, or as Daniel Siegel calls it, 'mwe.'

Decision-Making as a Relational Practice

In therapy, decision-making becomes something we practice together—not something you’re expected to master alone.

We pay attention to:

• • How choices register in your body

  • Which parts of you feel afraid, protective, or urgent

  • What old relational rules are shaping the decision

  • Whether the choice supports connection without self-abandonment

Over time, clients often notice they’re less reactive, more discerning, and better able to tolerate the discomfort that sometimes accompanies honest choices and conversations.

Choosing From Alignment, Not Fear

Secure decision-making doesn’t guarantee certainty or ease. It does offer something more sustainable: alignment.

You begin to choose in ways that respect your limits, your values, and your capacity. You’re better able to recognize when a relationship invites growth—and when it requires too much bending.

Trust in yourself is rebuilt not by getting every decision “right,” but by staying connected to yourself through the decision.

When decisions come from safety rather than survival, relationships tend to become clearer, more reciprocal, and more resilient—whether that means deepening connection, renegotiating patterns, or letting go.

And from that place, your life begins to feel like it truly belongs to you.

Navigating the First Weeks of Dating: A Guide for Attachment-Aware Connection

Your body and mind are giving you signals the whole way—watch them, learn from them, and choose connection consciously.

Dating isn’t just about chemistry—it’s about nervous system alignment, relational safety, and noticing patterns that may have formed long before your first date. Understanding yourself and your attachment style can help you navigate attraction, connection, and commitment with clarity and ease.

1. Know Your Attachment Style

Your attachment style shapes how you seek closeness, manage conflict, and respond to intimacy.

• • Anxious attachment may draw you quickly toward closeness and reassurance.

  • Avoidant attachment may keep you emotionally distant, even during intense chemistry.

  • Disorganized attachment may feel pulled in opposite directions, craving connection but fearing closeness.

Awareness helps you recognize reactions that stem from the past, rather than the present.

2. Pay Attention to the Hormonal Timeline

Phase 1 – Initial Attraction (Weeks 0–2)
Hormones: Dopamine → excitement, novelty, desire
Attachment patterns:

• • • Anxious → seeking reassurance

    • Avoidant → curious, may pull back

    • Disorganized → torn between closeness & fear

Tip: Notice the thrill—observe patterns, don’t commit yet.

Phase 2 – Early Bonding (Weeks 2–4)
Hormones: Oxytocin → emotional bonding, intimacy cues
Attachment patterns:

• • Anxious → desire for closeness intensifies

  • Avoidant → tension between connection & space

  • Disorganized → confusion about trust vs. fear

Tip: Slow down and check in with your own needs.

Phase 3 – Clarity & Reflection (Weeks 4–8)
Hormones: Dopamine stabilizes → emotions more grounded
Attachment patterns:

• Anxious → notice over-attunement

• Avoidant → recognize pull-back tendencies

• Disorganized → distinguish old fears from present reality

Tip: Reflect on your nervous system—relaxed, anxious, or hyper-alert?

Phase 4 – Decision & Commitment (Weeks 8–12)
Hormones: Emotional regulation improves → better judgment
Attachment patterns: All styles can make choices from safety rather than survival
Tip: Check alignment between your intuition, body, and heart. Ensure chemistry matches trust, safety, and long-term compatibility.

3. Notice Your Nervous System

Attraction is physiological as well as emotional. Ask yourself:

• • Am I relaxed, curious, and playful, or tense and hyper-alert?

  • Am I retreating or overextending to maintain closeness?

Your body gives clues about safety and attunement that your mind might overlook.

4. Pause Before Commitment

Before saying “yes” to exclusivity or long-term planning, reflect:

• • Am I drawn by excitement, safety, or a blend of both?

  • Am I staying connected to myself, or losing myself in the relationship?

  • Does this feel sustainable, nourishing, and aligned with my values?

5. Practice Secure Connection

Secure dating is about choice and attunement, not performance or control. Aim to:

• • Stay present with curiosity and discernment

  • Maintain boundaries while exploring closeness

  • Align desire with safety, intuition, and authentic self-expression

When chemistry and attachment awareness work together, dating shifts from survival patterns to conscious connection—practicing trust, nurturing relationships, and creating bonds that can last.

11.12.2025

Dating After Trauma: How To Pace Dating To Reduce Triggers 

Romantic partners are well-positioned to trigger our past relational wounds or to be the healing agent, building our confidence in a safe, authentic connection. 

Interaction by interaction, we choose through obvious and subtle cues of connection whether we operate as codependent or independent partners, promoting growth and authenticity. 

These concepts hint at Secure Functioning. We all deserve to feel important and safe in our relationships. It goes both ways, or three ways: Partner A to Partner B, Partner B to Partner A and both partners towards the relationship, so that the relationship can continue to be a safe haven of mutual care.

I have been having this thought often lately about how many relationships sync up based on the compatibility of coping strategies, and, how coping strategies and attachment styles are intended on being situation or relationship based, meaning, they're not meant to be our personality in all places, all relationships, all the time. 

I am finally putting these thoughts into writing after a conversation at a coffee shop, where I was asked about the pacing of dating. 

Reasons to slow down in dating: 

1. See how each other handle stress and celebrations and when life is mundane and easeful. Ensure that you are compatible in coping strategies, as well as, when most in Core Self energy. 

2. Time for both of your Support Systems to reflect that you are both yourselves when with your partner. 

3. Time to confidently discern if your stomach feelings are supporting intuition to stay and be challenged in this relationship to grow, or if what feels like butterflies is the discomfort of flight: ”Get out of here and fast!” 

4. Get past the phase of hormonal decision-making and see how pleased you are with the habits you’re altering and keeping as you make space for the relationship in your social battery, time, physical environment, and emotional capacity. Time to reflect that you aren’t losing yourself or routines that keep you you to appease this other person to feel loved. 

5. Time to ensure you are not solely motivated to move forward because of how they make you feel, to be able to also reflect you love and are growing to love the greater sense of who they are and support their dreams and values too. 

6. Time to see integrity: that what they say matters to them actually motivates how they budget time, energy, and finances. 

7. Time to grieve all that we naturally project from past relationships on this new relationship, to let go of the comparisons that make this relationship feel the “healthiest,” and sit with what is the undertone of this relationship itself that gives you a sense of safety, trust, and love. 

8. Time to reflect: Are you both overcorrecting? Did you both get burned by dating someone avoidant or anxious, so find relief in the appeasing or independence of each other, blinded to the protective, insecure motivation of it in one another? 

9. Time to see them around others who have similar quirks, passions, and meltdowns to you, and see how they handle it in the moment and how they reflect and talk about the person and their moment of emotion later behind closed doors. 

10. Time to reflect individually and together and to have some sense of how past informs present and present informs future. To identify somewhat from real life experiences, together, of how you can both be healing people moving one another forward towards Secure Functioning in a relationship that appears and feels more and more secure with time. Mainly, time to ensure that the you that the relationship brings out is sustainable. And the same goes for your partner too. 

Influenced by Stan Tatkin's Wired for Dating and In Each Other's Care

8.6.2025

Boundaries as an act of love 

Boundaries are quite caring actually. When we consider the need for boundaries in a relationship we are saying that we value this relationship enough to try something different that keeps us in the relationship. 

We’re trusting the other person cares for us too, enough to honor what is needed for us to stay authentically engaged in the relationship. 

When boundaries are respected that trust grows and continue to feel the loving care within the relationship. 

And when boundaries are routinely dismissed even when they’re clear, we learn the other person is not trustworthy with the amount of vulnerability and presence we’ve been bringing into the relationship with them. 

We adjust, and sometimes we learn that the initial flight signal has validated data to exit the relationship. While boundaries often start with a sense of flight, a full exit/ ending of the relationship is not always needed. 

Finding the boundaries that keep you safe and give the relationship a chance is finding the gentle edges of tolerance within the flight, recognizing there are other emotions, other signals happening simultaneously. Boundaries give us patience, time to explore more relationship data, a chance to breathe and evaluate through protected experiences how it is to be in a relationship. 

And they can be adjusted. Sometimes we need higher, thicker boundaries just when we’re going through something tough or really exciting. Like having boundaries where you’re not spending as much time with the person that finds the flaws in everything when you think you might be dating the right person, finally. Or, if you just lost a job, maybe you have boundaries from the super strong optimist because you need to grieve for a moment. There will be a time in both of these circumstances where bringing in these people’s perspectives will be helpful again, it’s just not right away when it feels like a complete contrast to your own experience. 

Boundaries give relationships a chance by adjusting the dynamic, the dance, and seeing if there’s a way of staying in the relationship that honors both people. 

2.20.2025

Reflecting On and Sharing Our Values

I woke from a dream this morning. 

The premise: It appeared I had been solo traveling somewhere similar to New York City. 

I had been observing three things: 

1. The visual in front of me caught my granddaughter-of-a-photographer's eye of interest. 

2. A woman had been a few steps behind me for some time

3. There were two men together just behind her and then not really anyone else too close to us 

While my brain had taken in facts #2 and #3, the moment that the crosswalk cleared that I was looking flat on and the scene behind it perfectly piqued my interest, I sped up a bit, quickly took a shot of the scene, then turned around to ask if she’d take one of me. 

The funny thing is my dad, the son of the photographer, has learned over the years that travel photos have no value to him unless someone is in them. Especially in today’s digital world, we can see almost anything online. So personalize the visual memory with you in it. 

In that moment, both what I learned from Grandpa and Dad took over rapidly.  And as I placed myself at the tip of the crosswalk just between two of the white lines, I realized the lady I handed my phone to was 100 feet away from me. 

When I sat with the message: don’t hand your valuables away too quickly to someone who speaks a different language, I knew it had to mean something deeper, because I truly love and have sought out experiences of being the humble, teachable, observing minority in a setting when traveling. 

And here’s the information that settled in:

1. She was wearing a fur jacket. I have been vegan for most of the last two decades. While I’m not a loud activist, the moment she took my phone I realized she valued her next big buck over the connection to living things: people, and animals. 

2. She never showed that she knew what I was saying, actually appeared disinterested in learning, yet her hand was eager to grab my phone. 

3. I had been followed by these three same people for many minutes and there wasn’t a precise, common destination nearby 

Now I do want to pause and say, my phone is far from my greatest value. There was a message within these visuals: a social boundary message. 

Don’t give up your values too quickly to someone who doesn’t speak your same language. 

Okay, so this isn’t really about English and Farsi or Mandarin, or whatever her spoken language is if I had even paused to learn a tiny bit about this woman I was asking help from. 

Language of values. 

Gary Chapman gave us love languages, and with it the concept that we automatically love others the way we want to be loved. It’s easier for us to, and, it models to others building our hope of being loved the way we crave. The motivating principle, however, is that relationships thrive when we love someone in their love language and they love us primarily in ours.

I remember this tendency of mine when I was traveling as a 20-year-old Christian woman. I assumed that people identified with the majority religion in the area. When I was living in Italy, I assumed everyone was Catholic, when in Turkey, that everyone was Muslim, when in Amsterdam, that everyone was Atheist, and the incorrect assuming carried on each location. 

Now that I don’t identify with any religion, when I travel, I’m much more curious about the people in the places, and if they identify with their majority religion or frame of thought about anything they’re open to speaking about, or something specific that I came across in travel planning, or perhaps identify with some aspects of something common within their region with some customizations. 

Don’t give up your values too quickly to someone who doesn’t speak your same language. 

What are the languages of values? What comes to mind in this moment of reflection is this example: 

Before we hand over a generational antique possession, explore: Has this person freely demonstrated interest and appreciation of this piece as something more than financial profit? 

• Curiosity. Is this person asking genuine questions sharing an openness and interest in understanding the world behind my eyes? 

• Mutuality. Is this person receptive to when I turn the spotlight? How are they with my curiosity when I ask questions to understand the world behind their eyes? 

• Intention. Is this a person willing to accept influence as much as they aim to influence? 

• Generosity. Is this person willing to take everything they know about me and think best of me even when I make a mistake and am I willing to do the same for them? (Adapted from Brene Brown’s BRAVING) 

• Presence. Does this person evidently show me they value this present moment of time shared with me? If they’re rushing, now is not the time for exchanging anything of value, whether possession or expression. 

And by giving up value here, we’re speaking of something that leaves you vulnerable whether emotionally isolated in your wounding or physically abandoned in a state of unrest. 

So we return to the concept of mutuality. Or as it’s been said in the past: “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours. Okay. 1, 2, 3, show.” 

Whatever the value is, obviously we’re not going to share it with everyone. However, each of our values is laced with so many others. This list I have provided about some languages of values are indeed values themselves. 

Don’t give up your values too quickly to someone who doesn’t speak your same language. 

Don’t give away values to someone who is not driven by value themselves. 

An example comes to mind: think about how you respond to different signs homeless people carry asking for money or something. There are also loads of videos online now of people learning more about a homeless person’s situation and then giving. Or, the “Would you rather the liquor or the money?” type videos. 

What do you respond to? How do you respond based on the values you learn about other people? 

This weekend I’ll be surrounded by people who share very different religious beliefs than I do. And, I stand firm in knowing that we continue to love one another well through many shared values of how we show up and treat one another: with curiosity, mutuality, intention, generosity, and presence. 

May we each keep growing in community with people who share, inspire, and respect our values as we inspire and respect theirs. And may we keep our eyes, ears, minds, and hearts open to exploring dialogue and acts of honoring values as we adventure through the world, leaving the rose-colored, ego-centered glasses behind that say: everyone cares for my interest and won’t harm me. And as we put those glasses down, may we not be compelled to become suspicious and critical of everyone being against us. May we return to exploring the availability of shared languages of values within community, and, feel enough within our values when alone as well. 

Peace be with you.