Do you have a quote you live your life by or think of often?

I do! It is not what one would think of when talking about quotes, but I am very partial to it.

“When you assume, you make an ‘ass; of ‘u’ and ‘me’.”

Every time I make an assumption or someone around me makes one, this immediately comes to mind. As soon as I hear myself thinking the words, “Well, I assumed…”, I know I messed up.

I will usually finish my thoughts and then apologize after repeating this saying. It is never good to assume anything about anybody, especially when you can just ask them.

Very rarely do things go well when you assume something. I typically try to assume things only about myself. If I have a therapy appointment, I assume I am going to be in a bit of a mood later and plan accordingly. When I do feel myself making assumptions like that about other people, I correct myself then and there to allow that perhaps I will have completely misjudged the situation and I should be prepared to be wrong.

The word ‘assume’ is so triggering for a family that deals with a lot of hard feelings and past traumas. Already there is a lot of social anxiety built into lived experience.

For me, the word makes me immediately self reflect and realize that whatever has happened could have been avoided if I had just asked. Most of the time, you can probably assume correctly what someone will say or do, but those times that you do not can really screw up a relationship.