[On Saturdays my topic of focus is A Small, Good Thing, inspired by one of my favorite Raymond Carver stories.]

A big part of my identity is rooted in thinking of myself as a kind, caring, gentle and optimistic person…one who says supportive, positive things…a Tigger, not an Eeyore.

I’m uncomfortable saying anything that might come across as negative or unnice.  I hate the thought of hurting someone’s feelings or having them get angry at me.

I’m going to try devoting my Wednesday blog posts to the topic of What I’ve Been Reading. This is going to be easy because I’m always reading something.

Right now I’m reading Hold Me Tight, by Sue Johnson.

Dr Johnson brilliantly thought to apply Bowlby’s attachment theory (infant/parent bonding, the need for touch in order to thrive, etc) to adults, and developed her Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy.

Johnson talks about “Solace Sex” in her chapter entitled Bonding Through Sex and Touch:

I’m going to try devoting my Tuesday blog posts to the topic of Psychology, Human Behavior and RelationshipsWhat makes people tick?

I’ve resolved to blog daily, and now already I had a hectic Tuesday and missed posting. So here comes a quick Tuesday blog post, on Wednesday.

I’m reading Hold Me Tight, by Sue Johnson, and this passage, about the trauma we feel when a loved one turns away from us at a time of great need, really got me. Why would someone who loves us abandon us as the very moment we need them most?

I am a huge fan of John and Julie Gottman, the couple who founded The Gottman Institute and have created so many effective, evidence-based interventions for couple therapy.

I pre-order John Gottman’s latest book, The Science of Trust, and devoured it as soon as it came out this summer.

When I really admire an author, I get curious about what they read and who they admire. And Gottman is very open about naming the people who have had an impact on his own work and discussing their ideas at length.

John Gottman considers the psychologist Dan Wile his mentor, so of course I wanted to read Wile, whose book, After the Honeymoon, turns out to be a treasure trove of wisdom and reassurance.

Nat writes:

…if someone hurts you in a way that you would never hurt anyone else, how you do stop yourself from mentally adding ‘but I would never do what they did’?

Forgiveness is a thing you do for yourself, because you ideally wish for your internal landscape to be as free and open and unencumbered as possible.

Every hurt or grudge you hold onto is like putting a wall around a patch of your own internal emotional terrain. You gain security but you sacrifice emotional acreage. You become less open, less generous, less available, less free. Your world becomes smaller.

I’m discovering that the biggest chunk of the work involved in forgiveness is that of untangling my own cognitive distortions.

I jumped to conclusions about what comments or behaviors meant….and then felt hurt.

So did _____ really hurt me? In so many instances, it was actually my own thoughts  that hurt me!

Here’s an assignment from a fourth-grade student’s homework that has helped me get much clearer:

Read the following statements, and label each statement fact or opinion.

1. George Washington was the first President of the United States. (fact)
2. George Washington was the greatest president we ever had. (opinion)
3. Cats have whiskers. (fact)
4. Cats are sneaky. (opinion)

Facts are things or events that exist (or existed) in External Reality.

I’ve just begun reading Wounds Not Healed by Time, by Solomon Schimmel, in which he explores the psychic rewards and also the hard work of forgiveness.

Unlike physical injuries, the wounds of betrayal don’t just fade away over time. If anything, the emotional injuries that happen between people tend to become worse when left unaddressed.

This is because people ruminate; we replay negative events over and over and over in our heads, entrenching them ever more deeply in our neurons.

And as we rehearse these negative experiences, we also distort them little by little with each rehearsal, so that we wind up creating memories that are worse than what really happened. These memories are emotionally charged and feel vivid and REAL to us.

So here’s one of Life’s ironies: Chronic loneliness sabotages love.

The condition of being lonely creates brain changes which result in self-defeating beliefs and negative attitudes, which in turn generate a self-fulfilling loop of relationship failure and further isolation.

So, the very people who need and crave love most, wind up being the folks least likely to be able to accept it.