If we become skilled in giving ourselves empathy, we often experience in just a few seconds a natural release of energy which then enables us to be present with the other person. If this fails to happen, however, we have a couple of other choices.

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.

Never connect yourself with the other person's pain. Just hear their need. Leave yourself out of the other person's feelings and needs.

When we are depressed, our thinking blocks us from being aware of our needs, and then being able to take action to meet our needs.

In our culture, most of us have been trained to ignore our own wants and to discount our needs.

Clinical training in psychoanalysis has a deficit. It teaches how to sit and think about what a person is saying and how to interpret it intellectually, but not how to be fully present to this person.

Never give advice to your children unless you have it in writing and notarized.