Hi! I’m Andee, and I teach humans how to operate their brains differently so they can transform their lives. If you’re a new subscriber, welcome! I write stories- mainly about my life in NYC, the inner landscape, and how the human brain fucks us out of being able to do cool shit. This is a follow-up to my piece from this past Sunday entitled “How to say what you mean *and* be well-liked." You can read the original here. Great to have you here!
About ten years ago, a friend of mine, JoAnna, coined the phrase “going blue.”
Used in a sentence: “I went blue on him.”
Going blue is when you send a text to someone that is SO LONG the entire screen is filled with “blue.”
(*We are iPhone users.)
For my Aphantasiac friends, I created this screenshot example so you can see it:
Just, replace “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” with word vomit about your feelings.
Have you been there? You hit that “critical mass,” and you spend 45 minutes drafting the perfect heart-spewing text, only to be left on read?
I spent a long time being left on read, mainly by men. HOWEVER, I’ve also gone blue on my mother, and various other triggering people before I learned to have hard conversations.
We choose to “go blue” (or insert the Android equivalent) because it feels safe.
In my last piece, I discussed the phenomenon of “Did you tell them?” followed by “They know.” This is often a well-disguised way of saying, “I am afraid to tell them because I am afraid of the consequences.”
Going blue is the same thing. We choose that strategy because it’s a means of control. We have lots of time to think about exactly how we want to craft our message, and when we finally get it just right, we have a safe, masterful delivery that we can send without any fear of anyone coming right back at us.
We’re so sly, aren’t we?
Except… those texts often… usually… get ignored.
They’re not a substitute for hard conversations. They do not provide resolution, and they’re not effective in creating a shared understanding. They are a perfected “mask” we put out there to cloak ourselves, and if we’re lucky enough to get a response, it’s usually one of the same sort. (They send a mask to us right back.) No mutual understanding is reached, and the festering issue continues.
Reaching a mutual understanding is just another area we’ll dive into in my three-hour live event called “Say what you MEAN *and* be well-liked!”
Our relationships with other humans are not a game of Battleship.
Spiritually, we are here with others so we can learn about ourselves. Having hard conversations can be a joy because it shows us where we still have layers to uncover. It's a beautiful thing when you match with someone who triggers you. That’s soul connectivity. Maybe you’ll grow and learn together in this magical symbiotic state. Maybe you’ll level up, find a ton of self-worth, and kick the undesirables to the curb. Either way, inside of this exploration, you win.
Avoiding exploration is a loss every time. It usually leads to wanting to grab wine or ice cream because we don’t want to feel the things we’re feeling. Then we just end up with headaches.
And also, what about the soul-crushing, empty feeling of sending that beautiful masterpiece only to be ignored?!
Well, OF COURSE they are going to ignore you! You just tried to sink their battleship!
Having the tools to communicate your message effectively is beautiful, and that’s what we’ll cover in the class I’m teaching on May 15.
You can learn to say things with your voice and have people hear you. You can learn the art of timing, and how to get a person to not become immediately defensive.
My 3-Hour LIVE Event called “Say what you MEAN *and* be well-liked!”is for you if you:
Have a relationship problem, and you can’t seem to communicate your feelings
Are being taken advantage of by a friend, boss, lover, etc
Feel constipated with your words all the time
Had a situation recently where you said something, and they made you out to be “the bad guy”
You have a “they know” situation (and… did you tell them? 😉)
You feel unheard
You think to yourself: Why does everything always have to be “nice” or “good?!” (It doesn’t. That often feels unsafe, because it’s toxic positivity.)
You’re tired of playing nice, but you don’t know another way
You’ll have a full-on meltdown if someone asks you to tell them what you want to eat for dinner (Kidding but… am I?)
You just want to know how to better stand up for yourself
You’re a WRITER (hey, Substack) but you feel like if you write what you mean you’ll piss people off
The event is coming up on May 15 at 11:30 am Eastern, 8:30 am Pacific.
Tickets are ridiculously cheap at $25 bucks.
We’ll have a great learning session and then go into Q&A about your specific questions. I will also record this and provide a replay to all who attend.
Register by clicking the button/link below.
Radical candor is my :: chef’s kiss :: favorite thing and I do believe that finesse can be taught. So, come and hang out. It’ll be wonderful.
Hope your week is off to an amazing start
Stay Beautiful.
Wonderful! "Avoiding exploration is a loss every time" is brilliant; it gets much closer to the core of emotion-dumping than the actual act. As a writer, I can also support your course wholeheartedly. Going deep should be at the heart of any scribe's scribblings...