Let’s pretend that you have to have an awkward, uncomfortable conversation or confrontation or something else that begins with “con” coming up.

And I’ll just go ahead and assume that you’re totally not looking forward to it.

Anyway, even if that’s not what’s going on for you right now, it will be the case at some point, because relationships between people? Sometimes hard and messy.

Just play along with me.

If you’ve ever found yourself in a meltdown moment, you know how annoying it is when someone says, “Breathe”.

Because when you’re freaking the heck out, other people’s advice usually seems stupid and irrelevant — just in general, and then all the more so in your specific semi-hellish situation.

When the thing you really think you need is either a tranquilizer or more chairs to throw at the wall, the idea of taking a deep breath is just not all that appealing. The value isn’t obvious.

And in the “people ask the most interesting things that I’m not always qualified to answer” department:

Today’s Ask Havi edition is locality-specific …

But rest assured that if you’re a smart cookie, and I know you are, you can figure out how to apply today’s answer to something else.

Because anxiety sucks. That’s why we need coping tactics.
Some woman contacted me this week kinda randomly because she was hoping I could give her some techniques to help her deal with anxiety.
Which always makes me wish you could hug people over the internet. Because I’d totally do it.
And because: ohhhhhhhh. Anxiety = not [...]

One thing I hugely admire about Naomi-my-internet-crush (aka Itty Biz) is the way she totally asks for things. “Huh. What does she ask for?”, you ask. Well, pretty much anything she wants. It’s fantastic.

It’s not just the way she asks for what she wants since I’m also in mind-melting awe of the way she gets it … but that’s another part of the equation altogether. Actually, it’s so far out of the equation, it might not even be up on the same chalkboard.

Whenever you’re flipping out or just having a bit of a “moment”, the tendency is to jump in right away and search for the way out. And when you don’t find it, you feel more annoyed, more frustrated, more helpless. It happens even to those of us who have been working on these issues for years.

Hanging out in the waiting room of my doctor’s office the other day, I meant to catch up on some work. Instead, I got distracted by a handout called “The Top Ten Ways to Calm Down and Get Rid of Stress”. Or something like that. I don’t remember the exact wording, but it was definitely ten and definitely calm.

Gaaaaaaah! You’re barely two minutes into the conversation and all of a sudden you’re in a fight. Or not in a fight, but irritable enough to get in one. The words have somehow gotten twisted together. Everything is stuck. The thing you meant is getting tangled up with the thing your partner in Miscommunication 101 thinks you meant. You’re in a plonter as they say in Yiddish. You know, a confused, messy web-like disaster. A pain in the tush of a mistake of a hard time.

I finally got around to watching Word Play last night — a 90 minute homage to “puzzle master” Will Shortz and his wonderful world of crosswordsmithery. “Finally” because everyone I know has already told me at least once to see it.

When you get that “green light feeling” about something and you run with it, good things happen. The rest of the time, however, you second-guess yourself until it’s second nature.