It’s Super Interesting

This will be short and sweet and cover a curiosity and then some housekeeping.

First, a little poem I have lived on for many years in terms of basic decency in relationships (harder in the closest ones).

You can tell me about you
And ask me about me

But don’t tell me about me
And ask me about you 

Really let that sink in. It’s not ever going to be a negotiable, fair situation if a disempowered and emotional person is asking someone else to weigh in as an authority on them. And it doesn’t really ever work, especially in conflict, to tell someone else about their tendencies unless they consciously sought out that info. In my marriage we catch it with humor at first and say stuff like “ok, now you’re getting in my helmet-not cool” or “thanks for taking inventory of me, nice, hard pass”. That usually extinguishes it.

You can test it out. Everywhere, in all your experiences. It’s liberating. It’s pretty much Psychology 101. I picked it up in the nineties from my boss at a hair salon. I was a broke musician with three day jobs. Second hand therapy was as handy as Good Will for a stage outfit.

So here’s the super interesting part.

Every single email I have gotten that is a rejection of my substack tells me about me.

Every single email I have gotten from people who appreciate my substack tells me about the person who is writing me.

Isn’t that interesting? Couldn’t that be a measure of the tactic used since March of 2020, to get the public to drink the kool aid? To focus on others and not yourself?

I wrote more about that awhile back here.

Housekeeping:

I get the sense that people who wish to unsubscribe may be unsubscribing from Substack the site itself, and not necessarily my project. If you are not a regular user of Substack and do not go into the website to unsubscribe, it may not have worked. I promise I’m not holding you hostage to my newsletter.

I understand the frustration of attempting to unsubscribe and still getting my emails. Not cool! So if you go to the Substack website, you’ll find all kinds of amazing stuff you may want to know, and you can uncheck me. If that is cumbersome, just email me amy@amyloftus.com and I will manually remove you. Of course, I’d love to hear from you about you. If not, know you’ll be added to my amateur psychological experiment. (I’m joking)