The other week my friend called me distressed. A week earlier she had gone through a second round of layoffs in her company where she had to deliver the bad news to employees on her team. And now she was being demoted, which there was no sound reasoning for the decision. Her boss wanted to talk about the change in her role. When she told him that she was still processing her emotions and not ready to talk about it, he replied that he could handle her raw feelings. So she shar

For most of my life, I thought reactivity was productivity. I didn’t call it that at the time, of course. I called it… Being driven. Being responsive. Being efficient. Being passionate. Being ambitious. But underneath all of that was a nervous system that had become deeply accustomed to urgency. A pattern that was quietly undermining my happiness, my success, and my health. And despite knowing better for years, I couldn’t do better. An idea would come to me, and I’d inst

I didn’t know it was wrong. Because I thought it was normal. Growing up, there was a lot of arguing and yelling in my family. It was...