If you have an image of someone cutting off a relationship, it's the cutting off that will lead to your suffering. If you see the action as their need being expressed, then the message is within them, not you. Any interpretation you put onto another person's message (such as passive-aggressive, withholding, etc.), you will pay for because of how you took it.

Needs are the expression of life through us.

Use the words "I feel because I" to remind us that what we feel it isn't because of what the other person did, but because of a choice I've made.

It's really a spiritual practice that I am trying to show as a way of life.

We only feel dehumanized when we get trapped in the derogatory images of other people or thoughts of wrongness about ourselves. As author and mythologist Joseph Campbell suggested, "'What will they think of me?' must be put aside for bliss." We begin to feel this bliss when messages previously experienced as critical or blaming begin to be seen for the gifts they are: opportunities to give to people who are in pain.

Analyses of others are actually expressions of our own needs and values

The only time a message (label) can scare us is if we think there is such a thing, and that such a thing is a disgrace.