10 recommendations on how to stop worrying and stressing yourself out

At every stage of life there are quite a lot of reasons for worry: exams, disputes with parents, unrequited love, disagreements in the family, difficulties at work, health concerns, financial difficulties, worries about children. Problems replace each other or are repeated with changing roles. But it’s one thing when worries concern truly important things and are limited in time, and quite another thing to constantly worry about literally every little thing. To understand how to stop worrying about anything, it is important to understand the causes of worry.

What does it mean to beat yourself up?

Self-inflation occurs in the internal or mental space when a person starts a certain program or internal story that reflects fears and anxieties about the future. Needless to say, our psyche is stuffed with various programs, and the main part does not bring any benefit.

These programs are very intrusive, and if some thought sneaks into your head and you notice it, then it begins to increase in size and appear from different angles.

After all, as it happens: something happened, you thought about it, you had an emotion, you worried, thought, and this thought comes into the focus of your attention, takes root and begins to live its own life.

At the same time, the emotion that arises is most often anxiety, apprehension, fear of something, and the more you think a thought, the stronger this emotion becomes, the more diverse thoughts come, but they all revolve around the main thought. And unfortunately, one always thinks about the worst-case scenario.

For example, you are telling yourself that your husband is cheating on you.

Event - your husband is late at work, you call him, he doesn’t answer the phone.

If there have already been cases of infidelity in your life or you are simply jealous and do not trust your husband, then your thoughts will follow a certain scenario or the story that you have inside.

And the story is simple - my husband can cheat on me! And period!

The trigger went off - your husband is not at home, does not answer calls, and your thoughts rushed towards the fact that he is this and that, a bastard, he does not value me, does not respect me, I hate him, I will cause a scandal, get a divorce, etc.

With every minute, your emotional stress grows, you look at your watch, and your thoughts are spinning in only one direction - he’s cheating on me now! You already imagine in the smallest detail how this is happening, and hatred is already raging in you, and if he enters the house now, there will be a huge scandal. You screwed yourself! After all, you don’t know why your husband was delayed?

What could have happened in reality?

I’m late at work, my phone is dead, maybe my phone is on silent mode, maybe I’m stuck in a traffic jam, there’s an accident ahead and I’ve been whining and angry for 2 hours, but my phone is dead and can’t call. Yes, anything could have happened, and most likely, there was no need to be so angry and worried!

Now we have dealt with the case of jealousy, but how often do you worry and worry about your loved ones?

Do you think and are nervous that something bad could happen to them?

Why shouldn’t you worry and be nervous about your loved ones? How this harms them, I wrote in this article

The same thing happens - a trigger (event) - the person’s absence at the appointed time or did not call, and that’s it, your personal story is included. In such cases, is the fear of losing a person triggered, the fear that something happened to him?

As you understand, worrying and overthinking yourself is a destructive program that you yourself once created, which means you can get rid of it.

In order to stop worrying and stressing yourself out, you need to:
Realize that you are screwing yourself over.
Being aware of what's going on in your head will help you cope with your nerves and worries.

You seem to be aware because you are thinking these thoughts and feeling the emotions. Unfortunately, thinking and awareness are completely different things. When you think these obsessive thoughts going in a circle, you stress yourself out more and more and plunge into this experience, literally drowning, as if you were caught in a funnel and cannot get out of there.

The problem is that you are inside this funnel, and you cannot soberly and impartially look at the situation from a different angle, turn on logic and reason. Now you are controlled by emotions.

Your task is to step back from the situation and become an observer. In order to pull away, you need to stop this endless internal dialogue, the thoughts that are in your head.

Being in a tense state, you are overexcited, your body works in danger mode and stress hormones are produced in full, and this happens automatically. Your task is to exit the automatic mode, turn off the danger mode and go into rest and relaxation mode.

Signs when you are very worried and overthink yourself:

You are completely in your head, in your thoughts, in your emotions and completely oblivious to your body.
Your face is tense, your jaw is clenched, you constantly “freeze” in your mind, imagining different “pictures”.
Your hands are clenched into fists, even if you relax, after a while, your hands involuntarily clench.

Learn to be aware of anxiety

Despite the seeming banality, this advice is one of the most important. Sometimes it is enough to understand in time that a senseless panic attack is brewing in order to prevent it. If you allow yourself to worry, the experience will grow with every second. And having realized the excitement, you can concentrate on finding the cause. Most likely, it will turn out that the reason is not worth serious stress. You can almost always take control of your own feelings by simply recognizing what event is causing a panic attack.

A psychologist's recommendation on how to stop worrying and stressing yourself out.

Below, there will be techniques so that you can stop your internal mental stirring, the task of all techniques is to remove obsessive thoughts so that you can switch your attention (thoughts) to something else and relax.

A breathing technique that switches your body into relaxation mode.

Slow, conscious breathing will help you get out of stress mode and enter a relaxed state. Slow inhalations and exhalations. You should shift your attention from your head, from thoughts to your body. Start breathing and observing your breathing.

When you observe, the focus of attention shifts and thoughts begin to drift away. Each inhalation and exhalation you count:

Inhale – 1
Exhale – 2
Inhale – 3
Exhale – 4, etc.

Try to breathe deeply and with your stomach, feel every inhalation and exhalation, feel how your body moves in time with your breathing:

Inhale - the stomach rises;
Exhale - the stomach retracts;

When your attention is completely absorbed in the breathing process, thoughts will stop and the body will begin to relax. It is better to breathe while lying down, but you can also breathe while sitting.

Count your inhalations and exhalations to 12, and then start again from one.

When you breathe, thoughts may slip through again, you will immediately “see” them, feel them, but with an effort of will, you should focus on breathing again.

Breathe until you feel calm.

Especially for people who are stressed, experience tension in the body, are emotionally wound up, I wrote “Brief instructions for relieving tension in the body,” this is a cheat sheet that you can use in a moment of severe stress and calm down. To this instruction, I have added an audio meditation for deep relaxation - all this, completely FREE! Click here and take your peace of mind!

Technique "Stop the ticker"

The procedure for performing the exercise “Stopping the ticker”:

Imagine your inner mental space inside your skull.
And imagine your thoughts as an electronic ticker of some color.
Having seen your mental ticker, you will immediately understand that the information is repeated; as soon as your thought ends, it immediately appears again.
Step back and see inside your mental space, where is your ticker popping up from? And how many of these lines are there?
Now your task is to stop the ticker, and since it is electric, it means there is a power source somewhere. And the source of power is your emotions. See where the cord from the ticker goes?
Disconnect your ticker from the battery.

And now, your task is to discharge the battery with your experiences. Do the following exercise.

Discharging the battery with emotions.

You saw a cord that is attached to your ticker.

Mentally take the cord in your hands and start looking - where does it come from? Let your imagination imagine some kind of container in which your emotions are located... it could be any vessel filled with a boiling composition, this composition boils and gurgles, and produces a lot of energy. These are your emotions...

When you see your vessel with emotions, remove the lid so that steam comes out and the tension decreases. When you open the lid, consciously relax your body and take several deep and slow breaths in and out….

Now that your emotions have calmed down a bit, unplug the ticker cord from the vessel.

Do you feel better?

You can continue to breathe and then you will calm down completely.

If you feel a little better, but you feel tension, then continue the exercise.

Change the composition and quality of emotions.

Now, your emotions have a negative connotation:

Fear;
Anxiety;
Helplessness;
Anger;
Indignation, etc.

See what color the composition is in the vessel? Most likely, it is dark...

For a moment, imagine a blue sky and a bright sun... see how a ray of warmth, light is reaching out to you, and right now, this ray is falling into your vessel with negative emotions...

A thin ray of sunlight begins to lighten the contents of the vessel... and now, the ray becomes larger and stronger, and the lightening occurs faster and faster...

Let the sunshine completely change your emotions...

You see how the composition in the vessel has become lighter, calmer, it no longer gurgles and does not try to get out... and your body relaxes, you breathe slowly and see how a ray of sunlight changes your internal state...

Focus on the ray of light... and when the contents of the vessel become completely calm and bright, then pour the contents over your body, let your body relax even more, feel the sun inside you, how it warms you, gives you a feeling of warmth, care and love...

Stay in this state as long as you need..

I offer you a few more recommendations from a psychologist on how to stop worrying and stressing yourself out.

I won't think about it!

Ask yourself: what am I thinking about right now? (voice the thoughts that are in your head out loud)
I want to think about this? (no, I don't want to think about it anymore)
You say to yourself: “I won’t think about it anymore.” and if this thought appears again, then you say to yourself: “I already thought of you, get out of here!” Don't think this simple trick won't work, it really does.
As soon as some clearing appears in your head, you begin to breathe slowly, with your stomach, deeply and slowly. Take 5-10 breaths in and out, observing your breathing.
If your thoughts come back while breathing, then tell her, I’ve already thought of you, get out of here.

Get rid of children's complexes

We owe many complexes to our parents. Trying to instill in us such important qualities as responsibility and a sense of duty, they often made us worry and feel a strong sense of guilt for every mistake. Overcoming complexes developed in childhood is difficult, but possible. To get started, start following four simple rules:

stop blaming yourself for mistakes;
do not attach importance to fictitious problems;
get rid of fears;
be yourself.

Constantly convince yourself that you are right and that your actions are correct. Even if errors occur periodically, their consequences are usually not so critical.

How to stop worrying and stressing yourself out with bad thoughts about your health.

For some people, overthinking yourself with bad thoughts about health becomes a serious obstacle to a happy life. If something suddenly hurts, then thoughts come that are difficult to get rid of. Logic in such cases does not help well, because fear arises, and fear breaks and bypasses any logic.

In order to stop screwing yourself up with bad thoughts about your health, first of all:

need to be examined;
go to the doctor;
get tested;
and understand how realistic your fears are?

It is especially difficult for suspicious people who, with any painful sensation in the body, begin to look for information about what it could be and make fatal diagnoses for themselves.

If you know this characteristic of yourself, then you should stop any actions to search for information that frightens you.

I understand that you are drawn to find out “the whole truth,” and these thoughts are constantly spinning in your head.

In order to remove these thoughts, you can use the techniques given above, and also work with the emotional vessel, in your case, the contents of the vessel will be fear. And of course, it is very advisable to contact a specialist psychologist to work through your fear.

The fact is that when a person constantly thinks about some diseases or problems, he puts a lot of energy into these thoughts.

Unfortunately, if we are very afraid of something, then it happens. You should get rid of fears, and then you won’t stress yourself out about your health.

Switching attention.

Begin to alternately bend and straighten your fingers. Observe the flexion and extension, as if from the side. There is no need to force yourself to feel how your fingers bend.

Just watch and your brain will see that something is happening in the body and direct its attention there. Obsessive thoughts will slowly stop, and then completely disappear. This technique will help you quickly stop the internal dialogue and give you a break from overthinking yourself.

Turning off the mental “radio broadcast”

Record your thought in your head.
Step back a little, as if you are watching from the outside.
While in a detached state, hear your thoughts.
Try to catch the intonation, timbre and find out what kind of voice this is? Maybe you will even recognize whose voice this is?
Imagine: a radio with a rotating volume control.

Your thoughts and this voice are broadcast from this radio. Now, there is some kind of radio program that for some reason went on a loop, and for an hour now it has been telling the same story.

Grab the volume control knob and turn the volume up to full power. Let your thoughts sound very loud in your head - amplify them to the maximum!
Now, turn it down sharply and turn it off!
Now there should be silence in your head

If the thoughts do not go away, then repeat from the very beginning.

“Trash thoughts” - sweep your worries out of your head!

Imagine your inner mental space - something spacious, light and clean.

Your goal is to make the inner space completely empty, and every thought that comes here now automatically becomes garbage.

See how many garbage thoughts are in your mental space right now?

Perhaps your garbage thoughts move and move from place to place, as if the wind is blowing... or lie in large piles...

With an effort of will, stop all movements of thoughts, remove the wind - fix all thoughts in place.

Now, pick up a broom and start sweeping away all the trash thoughts, clean up...

And as soon as the next thought appears, immediately sweep it away with a broom.

When performing this technique, try to breathe deeply and slowly.

This technique is easy to perform, and after a few visualizations, you can “sweep” all unnecessary thoughts out of your head at any time.

Think for yourself, decide for yourself

You can adapt to your experiences. Hide in a case and avoid everything that can cause anxiety: new places, new situations, new acquaintances. But is it worth living in constant fear? After all, the more you isolate yourself from the world, the more unfamiliar and frightening it becomes. Try to trust the world, and then it will begin to reflect not your fears, but your harmony and confidence. And now you know how to stop being nervous, how not to worry about trifles. The main thing is to start, and everything will definitely work out, and life will sparkle with new colors.

How to stop worrying yourself with bad thoughts before bed?

To stop worrying yourself with bad thoughts before bed and fall asleep easily, use any of the techniques already proposed.

If every time you go to bed you worry in advance that you won’t fall asleep for a long time, then you probably already have a certain ritual of not falling asleep. A ritual, a habit, a program, knowledge, can be called differently, but the meaning is the same - you act according to a certain algorithm.

And in this algorithm, there is a large share of fear.

The thought can be anything:

I won't fall asleep;
It will take me a long time to fall asleep;
I’ll think again before going to bed;
I’m so worried and impressionable, so I think about everything.

Behind every such thought there is some fear or “knowing” hidden, or what can also be called a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you think about it, it comes true. By the way, your subconscious is constantly trying to fulfill your desires. And any thought is an instruction for execution.

- “It will take me a long time to fall asleep” - please, done!

Therefore, try throughout the day to pay attention to what you think, what thoughts come to your mind? And as soon as you have tracked such a “prophetic” thought, immediately replace it with another, for example, “I fall asleep easily and quickly every day”

Recommendations from a psychologist on how to stop worrying and overthinking yourself with bad thoughts before going to bed.

When you go to bed, your task is to relax as much as possible.

Focus on your body - relax all parts of the body in turn, at the same time, do not say it mentally, but feel and sense it. Direct all your attention to a specific part of the body. And breathe slowly into your belly.

When you relax, do one of the suggested visualizations:

Secret place.

Each of us has a place in which we feel comfortable - nature, sea, cottage, etc.

Go to your secret place, imagine that you are there and receive only positive emotions - joy, happiness, satisfaction, etc.

What do you usually do there? Do these activities give you pleasure?

Mentally imagine and immerse yourself in the emotions that you experience while performing some actions while in that place.

Now, before falling asleep, imagine this place, and if experiences and thoughts leak out from today, then by force of will, return to your secret place.

When you can’t sleep because of thoughts and worries, then you put yourself under tension with your thoughts. And therefore, the body is about to sleep.

And when you have relaxed yourself, immersed yourself in pleasant sensations and emotions, then the body receives a signal, “everything is fine,” and that means you can gain strength and sleep.

I would like to add that it takes some training so that you stop worrying and stressing yourself out before going to bed.

“Black hole” is a way to stop worrying and stressing yourself out.

Do you know that there are black holes that suck everything into themselves? So, imagine such a small black hole at some distance from yourself. If the color black bothers you, then you can make the “hole” in absolutely any color.

So, not far from your head, there is a “black hole” into which your obsessive thoughts are sucked. Important! You are the owner of this “black hole”, and therefore, you can turn it on and off at any time.

And as soon as you realize that you are worrying again and stressing yourself out over some trifle, you immediately turn on the “black hole”.

Now, let’s move into your mental space - see every thought as a meteor, meteorite or comet...

Now, they are rushing chaotically around your inner space.

And every object has a tail... these are your emotions...

Mentally push the walls of your inner space apart to create a gap, and behind this gap lies your “black hole.”

You push the walls of your mental space, turn on the “black hole” and... the force of attraction of the “black hole” pulls all your meteorites and comets, along with their tails, into itself...

Step back and watch your thoughts get sucked into a “black hole”...

Now, when you are detached, you can simultaneously observe how your thoughts “fall” into a “black hole” and how your inner space becomes empty...

While observing this, your task is to breathe slowly, thereby calming your nervous system.

If you do this technique before going to bed, then when you “turn on” the “black hole”, be sure to say: “As soon as the thoughts end, you will turn off automatically.”

Most likely, when performing this technique, you will fall asleep, because your inner attention will be focused on looking at all sorts of meteorites and comets.

And if you do this technique during the day and don’t plan to sleep, then as soon as all your thoughts are sucked into the “black hole” and you calm down, then turn off your thoughts and destroy them.

And be sure to move back the walls of your inner space. Stretch a little, and take a deep breath down, and return to the “here and now.”

I hope that these recommendations from a psychologist on how to stop worrying and stressing yourself out will be useful to you and that you will use these techniques constantly.

Write in the comments which of these techniques did you like the most and helped you stop worrying and stressing yourself out about anything?

Be loved and happy!

Sincerely, family psychologist Natalia Gnezdilova.

IMPORTANT! DO NOT forget to download my gift for you “Brief instructions for relieving tension” + meditation in audio format for deep relaxation and stress relief!

Additional materials on this topic:

Symptoms and signs of chronic stress.

How to relieve tension in the body.

7 Ways to Relieve Emotional Stress

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Be prepared for anything

Often the cause of nervousness is an internal feeling of unpreparedness. It seems to a person that he is not good enough, has not understood everything, has not studied all the information, has not foreseen all possible risks. But procrastination usually does not improve the level of preparedness, but only makes us even more nervous.

Be prepared for anything. Try to anticipate possible stressors and don't view them as a failure. Calculate in advance how you will act if events do not go according to plan. Always think through several backup plans that provide for various errors and undesirable scenarios. By adopting this simple principle, you can stop worrying at any time and save a lot of nerve cells.

Plan the upcoming event, taking into account key points where deviations from the plan are possible. Think about what you will do in the event of unfavorable developments. It is necessary to identify several main blocks and provide for an unfavorable outcome for each. This will allow you to act with maximum efficiency, no matter how events develop.

Advice from psychologists for nervous overexcitation

Psychologists often face the problem of patients how to stop worrying and stressing themselves out. There is a lot of advice on this matter, but the simplest and most effective method includes breathing techniques. Deep, measured breathing will allow you to relax and pull yourself together. It is better not to use pills to calm down - many drugs help for a while, without affecting the essence of the problem, they are addictive. You can take chocolate as medicine. Increasing blood glucose will improve your mood and nervousness will subside. A monotonous but interesting activity will help you calm down, for example, knitting or embroidery.

A healthy diet, adequate sleep and physical activity are the key to a stable psycho-emotional state of a person. Adequate self-esteem and faith in people will help you stay calm in any situation, cope with nervousness and start living happily.

What does stress lead to?

A person who is anxious, nervous, is constantly in a zone of discomfort. Unpleasant sensations arise before an important meeting, event, presentation, or acquaintance. The appearance of nervousness is dictated by the psychological aspects of the personality. People get nervous if they fail, hear refusal, or look funny in the eyes of others.

Such psychological factors can greatly ruin your life. It is not surprising that these people are tormented by the question: how to calm down and stop being nervous?

An irritated person is unable to control life. All efforts are aimed at coping with negative emotions.

Losing control over life can lead to unpleasant consequences:

The use of means that allow you to get rid of problems for a short time (use of various medications, smoking, alcoholism).
Loss of life guidelines. A person, fearing failures, cannot and does not want to realize his dreams and desires.
Reduced brain performance.
Stress can lead to chronic fatigue, which can lead to serious illness.
Loss of control over the emotional sphere.

As you can see, the prospects are quite unpleasant. So let's figure out what you need to do to stop being nervous.

Causes of nervousness

Scientific and technological progress and increasing flows of new information keep us in constant tension. Even teenagers are faced with a huge amount of information to process. It's not always easy to deal with this. The deterioration of the environmental situation negatively affects the functioning of the brain and affects the psyche. The noise that accompanies life leads to increased fatigue, insomnia, and nervous disorders.

The main cause of nervous tension is personal emotions; they make people worry the most. Occurs when:

self-doubt;
inability to achieve set goals.

What makes you nervous is the fear of the future, which could leave you without a job and bring illness. Knowledge of human psychology will help eliminate the causes of nervousness.

Basic rules for peace in life

If you are completely healthy and constant anxiety is a feature of your character, listen to the following tips:

Be happy with what you have . Learn to enjoy life. Let today's small successes be a reason for joy. We got a new manicure, took our car back for repairs, washed a tough stain off a white T-shirt - great! The habit of excessive nervousness will disappear on its own when you learn to enjoy life.
Set goals for yourself and achieve what you want . Make a plan for each day and put a tick next to the completed task. Concentrate on your desires, and direct all your thoughts and actions towards their implementation. Then you will have no time and energy left for trifles.
Find a hobby you like . Devote yourself to what you love. By focusing on an exciting activity, you won’t even notice how negative thoughts leave you.

Maintain a balance between work and work, spend more time with children and parents, walk in the fresh air, attend social events and travel. Only by working on yourself can you get rid of anxiety .

Causes of concern for any reason

How to get rid of jealousy - advice from a psychologist for women, issues and overcoming

The cause of excessive worry may lie in fatigue. When a person endures deprivation, incorrect treatment, separation for too long, it is difficult to understand how not to be nervous about any reason.

Note! Events that cause negative emotions require a way out. You can’t hold them back and be angry in silence. The manifestation of aggression has a detrimental effect on the nervous system. This is a bad way to deal with nervous tension.

You need to find a middle ground, control negative emotions, letting them out. For example, don’t yell at your husband, but tell him what exactly doesn’t suit you. Speak your emotions, calling them words, explain your feelings. This useful habit of talking about sensations will help get rid of negativity, the containment of which is dangerous for the nervous system.

People with low self-esteem often worry about trifles. Each step is given to them with difficulty, through reflection and doubt. You need to love yourself and be confident in your abilities, finish everything you start, and not get irritated by little things. Then everything will work out, and there will be no reason to worry. The main thing is to understand that even if the business ends in failure, it will bring invaluable experience.

Focus on the present moment

Sometimes the cause of unnecessary anxiety is a well-developed imagination, which gives rise to unexpected options for the development of events. Many people tend to get hung up on coming up with negative scenarios. Often the basis for them is unpleasant events from the past, projected onto current circumstances.

Constantly rethinking your own actions, it is difficult to stop worrying, so such reflections are addictive. They require enormous mental resources and drain all mental energy, depriving us of the opportunity to work productively. Learn to concentrate on the current moment without tormenting yourself with unpleasant memories and without coming up with negative scenarios.

Act 2. Data systematization

The next step on the path to becoming happy and not getting upset by minor misunderstandings is to sort the existing irritants into three categories:

paramount, fateful, enormous, weighty;
less significant, not so significant;
especially non-playing roles in the current situation.

The main thing: when sorting like this, be frank, honest with yourself and objective. To do this, looking through each item, you should try to answer the question: “What will happen next, what can I lose if such and such a factor continues to exist and intensify its activity?”

So, in the first group of phenomena that interfered with my life and caused hysteria, there were not too many failures: my husband’s depression that lasted six months with corresponding bursts of aggression towards me, and regular visits from my precious mother-in-law, who stays in our family abode for days on end. And, of course, the eternal evil of our time is the lack of money and time. I identified the main obstacle in life as a lack of love for oneself.

The second camp of failures consisted of unpleasant but solvable problems, such as running taps, burnt-out light bulbs, a washing machine that was on its last legs, and other everyday problems. In the same category I included my daughter’s insufficiently excellent academic performance, the blatant mistakes of her subordinates, and the occasional criticism of her superiors.

The third group of failures was represented by phenomena that cause discomfort over trifles: unsuccessful photographs in contact, a purchased dress two sizes too large, annoying gossip from old women on a bench.

The secret to a successful relationship

Not only professional success, but also the nature of relationships with others: relatives, friends and lovers depends on psychological attitudes. For example, consider a romantic relationship. A person with a fixed mindset thinks something like this: “Either my partner completely understands me and shares all my views, or he is not right for me. Either our feelings are perfect, or they are worthless.” It is not surprising that any little thing can destroy everything.

People with a growth mindset understand a few simple truths:

Relationships must develop, and for this you need to make efforts.
All people are capable of working on their shortcomings and changing for the better.
A difference of opinion is not a disaster, but a reason for dialogue.

Everyone has quarrels. But look how differently you can react to them! People with a fixed mindset are very easy to label. In their opinion, either the opponent or themselves are not good enough. There is no third. This position only leads to mutual accusations, resentment and self-flagellation.

At the same time, those who are determined to grow try to intelligently resolve the conflict and draw conclusions that will help both partners develop.

Exercise 5

Imagine your ideal love affair. This means that there should be complete compatibility between you in everything, right? No disagreements, no compromises, no efforts and no sacrifices? Yes? Then please think again.

In any relationship, friction arises. Try to look at them from a growth mindset perspective: challenges can be a means of achieving greater understanding and greater intimacy.

Allow your partner to voice complaints. Listen to them carefully and discuss them patiently and kindly. You will be surprised how much closer you will become to each other after this.

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