And now, as promised, here are:

The Next  5 Things that Keep Us From Expressing Our Feelings.

6. Low Self-Esteem: You believe that others peoples needs, wants, and expectations are important and valuable, but yours, for some reason, are not. You spend much of your time trying to please others and meet their expectations but rarely, if ever, express your feelings or tell others what you want.

*My question here is, if other people’s thoughts, opinions, and preferences matter, then why don’t yours as well? Is there really such a thing as some people being fundamentally better than others? Or is that just a story we tell ourselves?

7. Spontaneity: You believe you don’t have the right to say what you are thinking or feeling when you are upset. You may feel that if you accurately describe what is going on for you (i.e. feeling hurt, neglected, sad, disappointed) will sound weak and ridiculous.

*You may very well sound and feel vulnerable if you are honest with your feelings. But not saying anything inadvertently tells the other person that it is okay if they treat you this way.

8. Mind Reading: You believe others should know how you feel and what you want without actually expressing yourself directly.

*This then gives us a good excuse to feel resentful and upset with others for not seeming to care about our wants and needs… even though we haven’t actually told them what we want and need. That doesn’t seem too fair.

9. Being a Martyr: You are afraid to admit when you are angry, hurt, sad, or disappointed because you don’t want to give others the satisfaction of knowing they’ve upset you.

*This is a pride/ego issue of feeling like we need to overly control our emotions and suffer in silence – again, not too helpful for the growth and development of any meaningful relationship. Not to mention the fact that when we do this we usually just end up feeling bitter and resentful.

10. Need to Solve Problems: After a conflict you go around and around in your head trying to figure out how to make the problem go away instead of just sharing your feelings openly and asking the other person how they are feeling about the situation.

*Talking it through and taking the time to understand both sides is WAY more productive and WAY less time consuming than trying to magically make the problem go away.

That’s them. Any favourites? I know that changing some of these habits can feel really difficult and maybe even a bit scary at first, but I can tell you from experience, it is so liberating and so much easier to learn to communicate in healthy and positive ways. And honestly, once we feel like we really can express how we’re feeling if something is bothering us, you’ll see that eventually you’ll start to notice how much less things actually do end up really bothering you. It’s really neat how it all works.