Literary Pixie

By Sammy Ginsberg

Yay! I am so excited for this book. My friend who is a therapist recommended it. I had seen the cover while working at Skylight and been very interested in reading it.

Chapter one is phenomenal! It is something that I have thought a lot about and learned intuitively. So great to study it! The first section refers to what I learned in the book Difficult Conversations, aka that we are often having 3 conversations at the same time and we need to learn how to have them together with the person we are talking to – what really happened, how we are feeling, how what happened affects our identity, and really focusing on having a learning conversation. How can use what happened to learn and improve our relationship so that we can live better together/work better together.

That book was life changing! It helped me realize that I did not have the tools to have difficult conversations, which is why I always avoided them or got overwhelmed and would shut down during them.

Since focusing on developing my own skills, it has made me realize that in order to be close to people, to deeply connect with my family, friends, colleagues, and students – they need to have these skills too! Or it is a one-sided connection.

They trust me. I don’t trust them. I meet their psychological safety needs, but they don’t meet mine.

And in the situations at work, they have more authority and power than me and then when I go to them for help and support which is incredibly vulnerable or make a mistake, they create a psychologically unsafe environment for me and I get injured/traumatized, and I am forced to leave the environment.

I have been wanting family members and friends to read these books! I have also been struggling to make friends who have read these same self-help books as me and have the skills and commitment to developing these skills. I have a few. But we live far away or aren’t on the same path and so we aren’t able to see each other often as we used to.

I am so excited to read this book, and can’t wait to share what I learn and the connections I make, and questions!

Also, re-reading this — do I meet your psychological safety needs? If not, I would love your feedback in how I can do that better!