Toxic Behavior

6 Breakup Pitfalls You Should Avoid Like The Plague

| Gayle Katz

6 Breakup Pitfalls You Should Avoid Like The Plague

Woman-Crying-Breakup-Relationships

Breakups are difficult. Scratch that. Breakups are soul-sucking torture.

Whether your partner hits you with the “we need to talk” line or you pull the plug on your relationship yourself, maneuvering a breakup isn’t easy and can be agonizingly painful.

 

Getting Over Your Breakup Is A Process

And it doesn’t matter if it’s your first breakup, your tenth, or your hundredth, if you liked or loved the person you were with – it’s going to be a bumpy road.

And that’s really the first step to getting over a breakup – admitting it’s not going to be easy. The next step is to ensure you don’t commit any of these breakup no-no’s. While it’s not the end of the world if you do, it’ll certainly make your breakup that much more difficult to get over.

How do I know it’ll take longer to deal and heal from your breakup if you fall into these pitfalls? I’ve done them. Yeah, I’m talking from experience here so do yourself a favor, keep reading, learn from my mistakes, and avoid these breakup pitfalls that will cause you even more heartache.

 

Here Are The 6 Pitfalls That’ll Make Your Breakup Much Harder To Get Over.

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Starting Over Isn’t As Scary As You Think

| Gayle Katz

Starting Over Isn’t As Scary As You Think

Starting over. Caterpillar changes into a butterfly.

Nothing is going right. It seems like the world is against you. You can’t get motivated. And it’s just depressing.

Whatever you’re struggling with and however you’re feeling is mudding your state-of-mind, your body, and your life.

And it’s not an isolated incident. The rain cloud follows you every minute of every day and it’s consuming you.

When things get this bad, so bad that you have a tough time getting out of bed or you feel the need to fake happiness with your friends and family, you may need to step back for a moment and consider another way forward.

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Frustrated? 7 Ways to Kick It to the Curb & Feel Better

| Gayle Katz

Frustrated? 7 Ways to Kick It to the Curb & Feel Better

Frustrated girl screaming

You know that frustrated feeling.

Your alarm clock didn’t go off, had a fight with your significant other, spilled coffee on your new shirt, and you’re late to work because no one knows how to drive. You just want to scream!

And that’s only the half of it, right?

First, I want to share a little secret with you. You’re not alone. We all get that way sometimes and I’m here to tell you, it’s okay. Feeling frustrated is a bad feeling, but it’s still a feeling you should try to face head on or else it’ll fester inside you and make you feel worse, at least that’s been my experience.

 

Frustration is born out of helplessness and lack of control

 

While feeling frustrated doesn’t feel very good, probably because of the helplessness and lack of control that goes along with it, try your best to funnel your frustrated energies into something positive, constructive, and practical you do have power over.

If I make this sound simple, that’s not my intention. Breaking out of your frustrated funk is anything but easy although with some practice, you can make your frustration work for you instead of against you.

Typically when you’re feeling frustrated, you put all your energy into banging your head against the wall. Not literally of course, but, if you’re anything like me, you’ll keep thinking about it, internalize it, and keep dwelling on it until you’re beyond exhausted. I don’t know about you, but that seems like a waste to me.

 

Take your frustration and channel it into something positive

 

Instead of doing what you normally do when you’re frustrated, here’s what I do when I’m feeling frustrated and want to make myself and the situation better.

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4 Ways to Make a Good New Year’s Resolution That Sticks

| Gayle Katz

4 Ways to Make a Good New Year’s Resolution That Sticks

Woman thinking about her New Year's resolution

New Year’s resolutions are nearly impossible to achieve. Why? Because most people are unrealistic when they haphazardly pull their banal resolutions out of thin air.

People set themselves up for failure by not crafting a realistic New Year’s resolution they can keep and make work for them.

Does that sound like you?

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Healthy Relationships – What NOT To Do If You Want One

| Gayle Katz

Healthy Relationships – What NOT To Do If You Want One

Healthy Relationship - Couple In Bed

Maybe you met your special someone at work. Or maybe you met on one of the many dating websites like eHarmony or Match.com. Maybe a friend set you up on a blind date.

However you met the person you’re currently in a relationship with, you want to do everything in your power to make it a healthy one, right? I’m going to assume that you’re really into this person and want to make a go of it.

If you’re perplexed about how to rev up your relationship so it has the best chance of succeeding, listen up because I’m going to share my secrets on what has NOT worked.

If you know you do one of the no-no’s below or catch yourself doing them, cut it out.

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Food Coma? 5 Healthy Ways to Recover From Your Thanksgiving Feast

| Gayle Katz

Food Coma? 5 Healthy Ways to Recover From Your Thanksgiving Feast

food-coma-recovering-after-thanksgiving

Did you overeat during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend? Fall asleep on the couch? Yeah. Me too. It’s called a food coma.

Between the juicy turkey, sugary sweet potatoes with marshmallows, starchy stuffing, and decadent desserts, I definitely ate more than my fair share of calories. I didn’t even mention the regular buttered mashed potatoes, tangy cranberry sauce, creamy green bean casserole, and tasty wine!

If you felt uncomfortable, bloated, and depressed because your relatives almost had to roll you to your car or you found yourself unzipping your pants just to breathe normally after your Thanksgiving feast, listen up. You’re not alone.

As I mentioned before, I am not a doctor, nutritionist, or psychiatrist. However, I am a regular person – just like you – trying to make good choices in my life.

Despite the Thanksgiving food coma, here are 5 pretty simple ways to recover from your gluttonous Thanksgiving rampage.

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Being Grateful: 10 Things to Be Thankful For When You’re Dealing With A Toxic Family Member

| Gayle Katz

Being Grateful: 10 Things to Be Thankful For When You’re Dealing With A Toxic Family Member

happy-thanksgiving-what-are-you-thankful-for

It’s that time of year again. Thanksgiving and the other holidays are here.

With that said, here are the top 10 things to be thankful for when you’re in the midst of dealing with a toxic family member during the holidays.

And they just might apply to you too.

Top 10 Things to Be Thankful For

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Stressed Out? 7 Non-Toxic Ideas To Chill Out And Be A Happier Person (Yeah – It’s Possible!)

| Gayle Katz

Stressed Out? 7 Non-Toxic Ideas To Chill Out And Be A Happier Person (Yeah – It’s Possible!)

stressed-out-toxic-person

Are you stressed out? I’ll admit life can be stressful at times.

Good Stress vs. Toxic Stress

According to WebMD, a little bit of stress is good. Good stress can help you be your best. It can help you perform better at an interview, focus more on an exam, or run faster in a race.

Stress also causes your heart to pump blood faster to your muscles in case you need to metaphorically flee from danger, which is good instinct.

However, if you experience stress on a regular basis, your heart doesn’t get used to those daily jolts to your system. This is a problem that may put extra pressure on your heart as well as cause a host of other issues, such getting sick more often.

While being stressed out isn’t good for your emotional, physical, and mental health, stress seems to be a normal part of life. It ebbs and flows just like waves in the ocean.

Let Me Be Your Fairy Godmother of Toxic Stress Relief

If you’re stressed out right now or headed in that direction, come with me on a quick journey through the things I do to help kick the stress from my life, at least for a little while.

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Unemployed? 5 Toxic Things Worse Than Getting Laid Off

| Gayle Katz

Unemployed? 5 Toxic Things Worse Than Getting Laid Off (And How You Can Face Them With A Smile!)

Unemployed woman upset at her computer

So you just got the axe. Or, maybe you’ve been unemployed or underemployed for a few days, weeks, months, or even years and it sucks.

I know exactly how you feel. I’ve been there multiple times. What I’ve learned is each time is different depending on how you felt about your job, the company, your coworkers, etc.

How You Feel When You Get Laid Off

Even if you somehow felt the sense of impending doom coming, you’re never really prepared for when it actually happens, are you? I know I wasn’t.

So what’s a person supposed to do when you’ve put your heart and soul into a job and you get canned? Well, if we were to remove the fact that you’ve been professionally crushed and let down by your now-former employer, you would just update your resume and start the job hunt.

The problem with this answer is that you’re not a robot. Whether you knew it was coming or you were completely blindsided by the lay off, you’re going to need some time to recuperate and how to explain your unemployment to your next potential employer.

In the midst of all this unemployed chaos happening in your life, other people and feelings will emerge that may make this nightmare even worse for you.

Let’s seriously talk about the negative things that you could face after you get the axe. In some cases, these things could be MUCH worse than being let go from your job, unless you know how to handle them.

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Listening: What We Learned From Our Date With The Chick-fil-A Cow

| Gayle Katz

Listening: What We Learned From Our Date With The Chick-fil-A Cow

Chick-fil-A Cow Listening

Ever since I got married my husband and I started a tradition of going food shopping on weeknights instead of leaving it for the weekend.

For starters, we don’t like going food shopping in the first place and, more importantly, it’s less crowded on weeknights than on the weekend.

On these nights it’s often difficult to cook dinner at home because time is of the essence. With that in mind, we started going out for dinner prior to our food shopping adventures.

Some nights we go out for Chinese food, other nights it’s Mediterranean, and sometimes we go to Chick-fil-A.

Last Monday night we happened to stop there and – to our surprise – we saw the Chick-fil-A cow. Even though I’m fortysomething, I still get excited when funny things like this happen.

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