TRUST .. it's such a big word ..

After looking up the word "trust" in many dictionaries, I found many heavy weight words associated with it......reliance, integrity, virtue, faith, help, confidence, support, comfort, consolation, reliability, trustworthiness, fidelity, faithfulness....  Wow....it's no wonder when trust is violated in any relationship, the sacred web, which contains all of these other words within its delicate strands, gets a pretty darn good shake, sometimes tearing a hole so ragged that it is beyond repair for the wounding it delivers.
 
In his decades of working with couples, John Gottman, author and well respected marriage therapist (and who I had the honor of studying with), says that just about all conflicts are about trust. "And you can think of there being a fan that opens up .. where every region of the fan is an area of trust. That would describe all of our conflict discussions." 
In his book "The Science of Trust" Gottman identifies the following trust related...read more

Periodically I catch myself judging people.  Even when I'm very aware and even when I know I don't want to do so, I still catch myself judging people. I have noticed that I seem to judge when I don't feel well (emotionally or physically). I feel I need to be negative about something, just to make myself feel good.  And...it never, never works!  Honestly, it makes me feel worse and makes my mind act like a whirlwind, spending a lot of time and energy being wound up about other people's lives.

So...wondering why we judge?
When we judge others, we try to place them below ourselves.  We seek arguments why we are better than others.  Why the heck would we try to do that??  Most likely because we are feeling insecure. We don't like ourselves well enough at that moment and we feel we must be negative about someone else in order to make ourselves feel better.  And, in reality how do you feel, this way of acting, is truly making us feel? 
  
What we do when we are judging others is making a ranking. Everyone we meet.....read more here

Family truly matters.  They are our foundation, from birth.  They are our support system.  They are our community.  In some shape or form, each member gives and sacrifices for one another. Whether it is a mother carrying and growing a child for 9 months, followed by eternal love and support, or a sister or brother helping a sibling learn to tie his shoes.  Our family is there to provide a helping hand, a conversation or a tough lesson learned.  Again.....family truly matters....

When our families grow up into functioning adults, family get-togethers and holidays can sometimes be difficult.  We are fully independent, have our own lives and yet sometimes everyone falls back into their childhood roles.  One plays the dominator, another one is the people pleaser, someone else is the blamer and maybe one doesn't even show up at all. 
 
And, to keep the peace (or so we think), we decide to go along with it and just deal with the situation,  internally.  Even if we only see them two or three times a year, if we are in a stressful family situation, we most likely have figured out the "dealing with it" in reality, creates more stress.  The holidays certainly don't feel like a vacation and they end up being more........read more