And then, one swipe up with a finger pops a picture of an event that many, many of the women I know were at over the weekend. Leaned over my shoulder, my daughter turns her head from my screen and looks at my face. “Mom, were you there?” No, I wasn’t. It’s not that I missed the photo op, it’s that I wasn’t there at all. “I’m sorry. Are you mad?”

No amount of compliments, affirmations or reassurances can rescue a person from their own self-destructive story. We’re programmed by our experiences and our biology combined and wired so deeply that while flooding someone with positivity may feel like the right thing to do as a quick pick-me-up, it’s like being thirsty and taking a shower instead of drinking a glass of water.

There’s really no way around emotion. We all have it, just as we all have thoughts and behaviors. Some of us are wired to think more logically, from our heads and some of us more emotionally, from our hearts. While logic and emotion often end up in conversation with one another, either one of these things can stand on their own. Yet emotion is often questioned, doubted or put aside for fear of logic proving itself to be right.