Elysia

“When you understand that you can experience strong emotions without having a dysregulated nervous system, it changes your relationship to big emotions and makes them far less terrifying to face.”
― Lola Phoenix, The Anxious Person’s Guide to Non-Monogamy: Your Guide to Open Relationships, Polyamory and Letting Go

“the biggest breakthrough was realizing that for some people a ‘calm’ nervous system is unnatural to them and they might seek out or attempt to do things that cause nervous system reactions because they feel so uncomfortable in the ‘calm’.”
― Lola Phoenix, The Anxious Person’s Guide to Non-Monogamy: Your Guide to Open Relationships, Polyamory and Letting Go

“While I do think it’s important to recognize that blaming other people for causing your emotions is reductive, disempowering and, at worst, manipulative, the idea that a person has no responsibility for the emotional pain they cause can be used just as harmfully.”
― Lola Phoenix, The Anxious Person’s Guide to Non-Monogamy: Your Guide to Open Relationships, Polyamory and Letting Go

“Another thing that Bancroft’s book highlighted to me was that abusive relationships are rarely all bad and that people who abuse can often be great people when they aren’t abusing their partners. It’s not as simple as finding a complete monster among angels.”
― Lola Phoenix, The Anxious Person’s Guide to Non-Monogamy: Your Guide to Open Relationships, Polyamory and Letting Go