Therapist Teaches You How To Open Up

When you have narcissistic parents you learn that opening up to them is giving them material to hurt you with. And they do it in such a devastating way that you become unwilling to open up to anyone else.

If you worry about being a burden, here’s the excellent advice my therapist gave me: share the emotion, not the responsibility. If you are just asking for support, but making it clear that it is not your friend/partner’s responsibility to make you feel better, people almost never fee burdened .

The people who submit these posts seem on another level, I couldn’t even organise my thoughts and feelings enough to recognise what’s wrong and write about it..

When you open up, others open up. Remember, though: you can only open the door. Don't get mad if they don't walk through. Same for getting anybody to like you. If they don't respond, move on.

Big fan here. Please do more call-ins with older people (30, 40 yrs+ old). They are feeling left out and we youngsters are missing out on the perspective a conversation with older people can offer. High time you talk with older people and deal with their issues as well.

I've struggled opening up to people ever since I was a child, and I remember the exact reason. I was going through a stressful time where my other was verbally and physically abusive. I was about 13 at the time and I spoke to the only person I could trust at the time, my cousin who was in her mid twenties. Turns out she was telling my mother everything that I said and was upset about, my mother then proceed to use it as more fuel for the verbal abuse. I felt so betrayed and alone and ever since then I've had trouble expressing how I truly feel unless I am extrememly pissed off and expressing anger

Asking for permission, although seems like a game changer, doesnt feel like it's gonna be that effective to me. Mainly because almost no one will say "Yeah, you're kind of a burden" to people they care about. So even when people tell me "Of course you can open up to me anytime", I think about the possiblity that they do feel burdened but they're saying that for the sake of the relationship we have.

1. Some amount of awareness of emotions 2. Label the emotion. Is it an umbrella emotion? 3. Natural instinct is to isolate when feeling vulnerable 4. Have you been invalidated in the past when you opened up? 5. Ask the other person if you can open up to them

For me what sucks is that when I look back at it, all the people I were super close with and comfortable opening up to ended up leaving my life (mainly growing apart as life went on). so now there's this subconscious fear that whoever I open up to will eventually leave which makes it harder to reach out even if I am comfy with them already.

I'm really glad the video isn't chopped up like the recent lectures have been. It's a lot easier to internalize the information without every small bit of silence being cropped out of the video, thus resulting in a lecture that's overly condensed and hard to follow and internalize. I hope it stays this way because I really value this channel and I watch almost every video that comes out.

I have done the thing suggested in the video several times over the last few months. I had three friends who I felt were safe. I asked them for a permission to share my personal problems and had SO direct, warm, and mutually rewarding conversations 💛 I opened up to them, and they opened up to me. Those conversations made me even closer to my friends. It was hard to even ask for permissions because those were the first acts of revealing my emotional needs. But it was 100% worth it.

What the dude from discord wrote about describes almost exactly how I act with my feelings. When I'm with other people I tend to focus only on things that have nothing to do with my negative emotions. I would never tell someone how bad I feel, and because I've been having this attitude for so long it happens almost automatically.

The problem is that no one is ever going to tell you straight up "No, I don't give you permission to talk about your problems", or "Yes, you are a burden". They'll always tell you what you wanna hear while secretly being annoyed or bothered by you, until eventually they can't keep it a secret anymore and they snap or start ghosting you or talking shit about you etc

Opening up is such a hurdle especially when you don't like yourself in the first place because not only do you have to worry about being a burden to your loved ones, you also have to worry with thoughts of self hate for being "weak", feeling "undeserving of love" and believing that you're "unworthy". I've tried to open up to very good friends in the past including using permission to vent (bc I needed that for my own nerves about opening up) but the more I opened up, the more suspicious of people I became because if I hated me, other people likely hated me too. It's horrifically isolating and I know it stems from having to be literally everyone's big sister without having that older sibling figure for myself and because I've been isolated (in vain attempt to maintain my reputation as the reliable big sister), I've really got no one to turn to now that I'm emotionally shutting down (not that I felt great about turning to people in the first place lol)

I think it's also helpful to remind people that you're not expecting them to make your problems go away or give you advice when you vent. And saying thank you for listening i feel better wouldn't hurt either :) personally an act of sharing my feelings itself is a great relief.

Even something as simple as "asking for permission" was something I didn't "dare" to do before because I felt I wasn't close enough to them to talk about personal stuff. Luckily I feel like I made some pretty close friends recently so Imma try your advices =D

17:24 perfect advice for my situation. There's someone who I'm talking to who's deeply afraid of opening up, and safety's a big issue I guess. I think I'm a quality partner, but he's been hurt in the past. It hurts to not have him open up, but I'm trying to give him space.

The biggest challenge in opening up for me is being afraid of judgement

Start with small things, little by little If you want someone to open up, let they know the door is open. Not trying to motivate or force them to, but give them the opportunity. Don’t dig in. Make them feel safe to open up.

Literally every time I opened up to my family and friends the message I got back was "no, you are wrong", or it was used against me. Every time I opened up to a partner it got thrown back in my face. Every time I opened up to a coworker I have been betrayed. Nah. I'm good.