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Not long ago, I heard the voice of someone I’ve known for years in a video. My body reacted. And before I had analyzed a damn thing, my mind handed me a complete explanation: I can’t stand this woman. There was no thoughtful review of the evidence. No Hmmm, Kelly, let’s explore the possible contributors to this emotional response. Just: I can’t stand this woman. Then came the sorting. Maybe this had something to do with my new role as a grandma. Maybe I was feeling territoria

Before GPS, I could be driving somewhere with somebody and remember pretty clearly that the store we were looking for was to the left. Then the person next to me would say, “No, it’s right.” And sometimes that was all it took. They sounded sure. Maybe I was 80 percent sure and they sounded 100 percent sure, so suddenly my 80 percent started feeling like 40. Fine. Let’s go right. Sometimes I genuinely reconsidered. Maybe they remembered something I didn’t. But sometimes I wasn

I do something so automatically that for a long time I didn’t even realize I was doing it. I translate people. I learned a lot of it through foster care. I remember being taught that if I was communicating with someone whose brain processed communication differently than mine, and they genuinely couldn’t understand the way I was saying something, repeating myself louder or getting irritated wasn’t going to help. If I had more ability to change the delivery, then I could chang

Someone is irritated with you. That’s it. That is the entire event so far. But somehow, three seconds later, your brain has produced: They’re mad at me. I did something wrong. They think I’m selfish. They’re going to stop talking to me. I need to fix this. And suddenly you are no longer dealing with the fact that another human being is irritated. You are dealing with an entire story about what their irritation means about you. Holy shit. I do that. Someone else’s mood can sta

Sometimes people are telling us what happened. They aren’t necessarily handing us an assignment. Years ago, a friend was venting to me about her teenager. She was overwhelmed by everything she was doing and everything her kid seemed to need. From where I was sitting, the answer looked incredibly obvious. I said: “Just tell them no.” There. Solved it. You’re welcome. Her face changed immediately. Then she said: “You don’t have a teenager yet. You don’t know what this is like.”

When one sentence gets mistaken for the whole worldview I was helping with a painting project when I said something that seemed completely neutral to me: “We always have to expect the unexpected.” That was it. One sentence. I wasn’t predicting disaster. I wasn’t being negative. The paint sprayer had already been acting up, so in my mind I was basically saying: Stuff happens. We’ll deal with it. The woman I was with heard something very different. To her, I was predicting that

When I thought we were connecting and you thought I stole the microphone I have literally driven down the highway with water in my mouth so I wouldn’t interrupt Joe. Not metaphorical water. Actual water. Joe talks on road trips. He can take the scenic route through a thought, and a few minutes in I can feel my contribution forming. A perspective. A connection. A thought that will absolutely improve this conversation if everyone would just pause for my brilliance. So I hold wa

Being understood and getting the response you want are not the same thing Years ago, I walked into one of my daughters’ rooms completely excited about something I had just learned. Kelly-has-new-information-and-needs-to-tell-a-human-being-immediately excited. She felt awful that day and had absolutely no energy available to match mine. She said something I still think about: I want to be as excited as you are. I’m just not capable of it right now. Come back in a couple of day

When recognizing an old pattern makes us think we know what happens next Personal growth comes with receipts. You spend years learning about yourself, changing behaviors, making different choices. Then somebody does something that irritates you and life quietly slides an old receipt across the counter. Ma’am. You have purchased this item before. Well, shit. Years ago, I loved babies so much that I once kept someone’s baby longer than they wanted me to. I crossed a boundary. Y

Before You Call It Procrastination, Ask What It Is Doing for You It was about 4:30 in the morning, and I was walking through the haze when a thought arrived: Maybe you are not procrastinating. Maybe it does not matter enough yet. I still think that can be true. But it is only one possibility. Sometimes the task matters deeply, and we still cannot reach it because we are exhausted, overwhelmed, afraid of doing it badly, unsure what to decide, or desperate to feel some control

This week I opened Wix to make a change to my website. It was a change I had made before. But I had already been working for hours, making decisions, fixing pages, and carrying far too many open tabs in my head. I knew where the settings were. I knew what I was trying to accomplish. I had successfully navigated the same general territory on another page. And suddenly I was staring at the screen as though Wix had been purchased overnight by NASA. Where did the button go? Why i

Most of my sessions happen remotely. That can mean a live phone or Zoom appointment where we are together throughout the session. It can also mean a non-live remote session, where you send me what you would like explored, permit me to proceed, and receive detailed notes afterward. Both follow the same basic principle: we begin with what matters to you. Here is what that process actually looks like.Two Ways to Meet Remotely: During a live phone or Zoom session, we are connec