Dr. Micaela

But the fact that you said, hey, I noticed and I'm checking in the communication to your friend is you matter to me.

And so that can help really connect me with my values of being a good friend so that, yes, I might miss things in the moment, but I'm still here and I'm present.

Right.

So that might be something you noticed.

Um, if you notice that you have a really loud worry, like everything you journaled is, oh my God, everything I did was make about me.

It's okay to do a gentle check-in, right?

Hey, I'm noticing friend that, uh, I talked a lot about me today and I'm worried that I didn't give enough space for you.

then your friend can be like, no, it's no big deal.

I totally feel like I had enough time and space for me.

Or your friend can be like, yeah, you selfish jerk.

And then you can go into your next hangout session being more intentional of like, okay, I am going to laser focus on you and then maintain that for as long as you can, because maybe you can't.

Undivided attention is actually hard for even neurotypical people.

So yeah.

If you read through that and you're like, you know, there's a lot of worries here, but there's no like loud major themes that I need to check on.

There's no big mistakes that I feel like I need to apologize for.

Then you take that, you shred it, you tear it up, you burn it.

If there's a safe way to do that in your space, you get rid of it.

Because that is no longer any of your business.

That is all of my immediate reaction.

And now I'm done with it, right?