Earlier this summer, Shara Arora’s 9-year-old daughter came home from a magic show determined to perform a few tricks of her own. Before long, she was holding up a towel and making a spoon appear to float behind it.

Arora could see that her daughter had taped the spoon to something. But instead of spoiling the trick, she acted amazed: “How did you do that?” Her daughter’s face lit up. She explained how she had devised the illusion, what had inspired her, and the trial and error involved in making a spoon float. The real magic, it turned out, wasn’t the spoon. It was what happened when a parent who knew the answer kept quiet and let her child become the expert.

“I always see it on their face,” says Arora, executive director of two Montessori schools in the Houston area. “There’s that prideful look: ‘I know something that a grown-up doesn’t know.’” 

A child doesn’t need a magic trick—or even a particularly impressive skill—to experience that same role reversal. Simply asking your kid to teach you something once a week can boost their confidence, strengthen their communication skills, and give you a glimpse into parts of their world you might otherwise miss. 

Let your kid be the expert

Kids spend a huge portion of their lives being instructed, corrected, and evaluated. Asking them to teach you something—even for five minutes—changes that dynamic in a small but meaningful way.

For once, the parent stops being the authority and becomes a curious student. That can be especially powerful for children who struggle in school, says Alex Anderson-Kahl, a school psychologist and founder of Raise Strong, which offers practical tools and coaching for parents. Parents get to see that “competence doesn’t just live on a report card,” he says.

Maybe your child finds math class miserable but can construct an elaborate Minecraft universe. Perhaps they boast an encyclopedic knowledge of dinosaurs, know every rule of a sport you only pretend to understand, or can edit a video faster than you can locate the camera app. Asking them to teach you creates an opportunity to demonstrate—and experience—their own capabilities. That can resonate more deeply than simply hearing, “You’re so smart.”

“You’re giving the child an actual opportunity to show their confidence,” Anderson-Kahl says. Plus, the lesson offers clues about how they think: how they organize information, communicate an idea, and respond when someone doesn’t understand.

Teaching also helps children strengthen their grasp of whatever they’re explaining. They can’t simply repeat a fact; they have to determine how the pieces fit together, decide where to begin, and identify any gaps in their own knowledge. As anyone who has attempted to explain the rules of a board game knows, understanding something yourself and successfully conveying it to another person are two very different skills.

What exactly is a child practicing while teaching a parent? “It would be easier to say what they aren’t,” says Michelle Retsky, a speech-language pathologist and founder of Words in Motion Therapy.

One of the biggest benefits is perspective-taking, or figuring out what another person knows and what they don’t. A child explaining Fortnite, for example, might initially be shocked that their favorite adult has somehow made it this far in life without playing. That means they get to provide context, define unfamiliar terms, watch for confused expressions, and adjust their explanation accordingly. That flexes communication, language, and executive-functioning skills like planning and organizing.

The exercise can be particularly helpful for shy kids and reluctant communicators, Retsky says. A child who has little to say about school might happily talk for 20 minutes about a favorite video game or movie. They’re speaking from familiar territory, without worrying that an adult will judge or grade their answer.

Retsky recently met a child who kept his head down through a series of introductory questions. “I didn’t even see his face yet,” she says. Pizza or tacos? No enthusiasm. Then she asked about horror movies. “Finally, he lifted his head,” she says. “I got to actually see the kid I was working with.”

Find an organic opening

There’s no need to formally schedule your child’s weekly lesson. Announcing that every Tuesday at 7 p.m. is now Teach Your Parent Night is an excellent way to transform a fun idea into homework.

Instead, treat “once a week” as a reminder to notice one natural opening. If your child is drawing, building, cooking, playing a game, practicing a dance, or excitedly recounting something they learned, get curious. Try: “Wait, how did you do that?” or “I don’t know how that works. Can you show me?”

For younger kids, concrete activities are often easiest. Ask them to show you how to draw a monster, build a LEGO house, make a play-dough pizza, or perform a favorite dance. School-age kids might teach you a basketball rule, explain the strategy behind a video game, or demonstrate how they created something. With teenagers, Anderson-Kahl suggests asking: “What’s something kids your age understand that adults don’t?” They might explain a slang term, a piece of technology, a social-media controversy, or why millions of people are refreshing the TikTok feed of a creator you’ve never heard of.

You can also ask, “What could you teach me in five minutes?” The time limit makes the invitation feel manageable rather than like a request to prepare a keynote address.

Make sure your curiosity is real. One common mistake Anderson-Kahl sees is parents performing over-the-top enthusiasm because they think that’s what supportive parenting looks like. “Kids can pick up on that so easily,” Anderson-Kahl says. “Your kid knows when you’re faking it.” You might not care about Minecraft itself, but you can be genuinely curious about why your child chose a certain block, how they made a structure stay upright, or what they plan to build next. The goal isn’t to convince them that you’ve suddenly become a devoted Fortnite fan; it’s to understand what they enjoy about it. 

If your child initially responds with an eye roll or “I don’t know,” don’t force it. You might simply ask whether you can sit beside them and watch for five minutes. Once they realize you aren’t there to nag, interrogate, or abruptly impose a screen-time limit, there might be more room for spontaneous questions.

The more often you demonstrate sincere interest, Retsky says, the more likely your child is to open up. When kids explain why a video-game character or social-media trend matters to them, “they’re revealing their values, social pressures, and interests without feeling judged or interrogated,” she says. In other words, the lesson might offer a window into their inner life—without making them feel like they’ve been summoned for a Serious Conversation. 

Resist the urge to take over

Now comes the difficult part: Actually letting your child teach.

That means not interrupting to correct their grammar, improve their technique, supply a missing fact, or demonstrate the more efficient method you developed during your additional decades on Earth.

Imagine your child is teaching you how to make a sandwich, Anderson-Kahl says. You happen to know a better way. “Congratulations,” he says. “Keep it to yourself for five minutes.”

Unless your kid is doing something dangerous, resist the urge to fact-check in real time. The point isn’t for them to create a perfectly accurate tutorial; it’s to give them space to organize and express their thoughts without slipping from creative mode into defensive-performance mode.

This restraint can be surprisingly difficult. During her Montessori training, Arora learned to avoid immediately jumping in when a child was struggling or doing something differently than she would. “I would literally sit on my hands,” she says.

Parents might need to adopt a metaphorical version of that posture. Let pauses linger instead of rescuing your child with the answer, and if they get tangled up, ask a question rather than taking over. Even if you have something useful to add, Arora advises waiting until “they’ve said everything” and shared their entire thought process before imparting your own knowledge.

Be willing to look like a slightly imperfect student, too. Ask questions, misunderstand a step, and let your child clarify. Kids rarely get to instruct adults without worrying that they’re being disrespectful, and doing so in a safe, playful context helps them practice rephrasing an idea when someone doesn’t understand.

It also models an important lesson: Adults don’t know everything, and there’s nothing embarrassing about that. “You will never know everything,” Retsky says. “The most important thing is to ask questions. The most important thing is to be curious.”

Afterward, look for a way to show that it stuck. Bring up the subject a few days later, use the slang term—at your own risk—or ask for an advanced tutorial. You might say, “I really was listening to you the other day, and I remember you saying this,” Anderson-Kahl suggests. Better yet, incorporate what your child taught you into your own life. They’ll know you weren’t merely indulging them; you were listening.

And if the conversation goes nowhere? That’s OK, too. Retsky considers this one of the rare parenting strategies with an unusually positive worst-case scenario. Even if your child declines to teach, responds in monosyllables, or wanders away midway through the lesson, they still received the message: “My parent cares about something I care about.”

Collect everything the average American kid throws away in the school cafeteria over a single year, pile it on a scale, and you'd be looking at roughly 39 lbs of food. That’s about what a typical 4-year-old weighs.

Multiply that across the country, and school food waste adds up to an estimated 530,000 tons every year—an alarming amount of uneaten sandwiches, rejected fruit, and unopened snacks. 

That makes food waste difficult to dismiss as somebody else’s problem. “If you eat food, you’re part of this whether you like it or not,” says Lauren Click, founder of the nonprofit Let’s Go Compost, which runs food-waste programming in more than 600 schools, libraries, and community centers. The flip side is that you’re also in a position to waste less—starting with a packed lunch, one of the few pieces of the food system a family fully controls. 

Here’s how experts recommend packing a school lunch that produces less trash—and stands a better chance of getting eaten.

See what comes home

Before you overhaul your lunch-packing routine, spend a couple weeks paying attention to what returns at the end of the day. Which foods are untouched? Is the bologna sandwich always missing exactly one bite? What never even made it out of the wrapper?

After a few days, you’ll probably start to notice a pattern. “If you pack based on what actually comes home, not what seems balanced on paper, you can track it each week and adjust over time,” says Lizzie Horvitz, founder and CEO of Finch, a platform that evaluates products for sustainability.

You don’t have to keep tabs on the lunchbox all year. August and September are when parents are still figuring out what—and how much—their kids will eat. “If you're really paying attention to ‘what's my kid eating?’ and ‘what's my kid consistently bringing home?’” Horvitz says, “there really shouldn't be any waste after a couple of weeks.”

Ask your kid what happened

Seeing what comes home is only half the job. You also need to find out why—and good luck guessing correctly.

Click has heard every version of this story: A kid suddenly stops eating apples, and their parent assumes they don’t like the fruit. The real problem? A classmate declared apples uncool. “You can't make assumptions, because you'll never guess what's going on in the mind of a 5-year-old,” she says.

Keep the conversation curious, not accusatory. Ask your kid who they sit with, how much time they have to eat, and what their friends bring. Maybe the orange takes too long to peel, or they can’t open one of the containers without help. Maybe their friend brings two sandwiches and shares one every day—in which case, congratulations, you can stop making a sandwich.

Save new foods for dinner

The school cafeteria isn't exactly an ideal tasting room. Lunch periods are short, cafeterias can be loud and chaotic, and no one is sitting nearby encouraging your kid to give that unfamiliar vegetable one more chance. (Rutabaga, anyone?)

“Maybe this isn't the time to have a really balanced, try-new-things meal,” Horvitz says. “Let's save that for meals at home.” That's not an argument for packing nothing but cookies. It means lunch should mostly consist of foods you already know your child will eat; save the experiments for dinner, when you’re there to encourage them.

Choose the food before the lunchbox

Compartmentalized bento boxes are adorable. They're also built for a very specific amount (and shape) of food, which may not match what—or how much—your kid eats.

Lindsey Schoenfeld, a registered dietitian nutritionist, chef, and co-author of To Your Taste: How to Eat Well and Feel Better for Your Whole Life, suggests starting with the food instead. Ask your kid what they ate all summer and which lunches they loved last year. Then choose containers that fit those foods. The folded half-sandwich that nestled perfectly into one tiny compartment in second grade might not cut it for a middle-schooler.

Before splurging on new gear, check your cabinets. “There's so many containers that we have around the house,” Schoenfeld says. “Maybe they don't have a lid right now. Maybe we need to dig through a few shelves.” You might need a new lunchbox, but you probably don't need every container inside it to be new too.

Reusable containers only reduce waste if you use them over and over, so make cleanup as painless as possible. Many silicone bags and food containers can go straight into the dishwasher—check the manufacturer’s instructions—and you don’t need to scrub them spotless first. “The dishwasher’s job is to make them completely spotless,” Horvitz says.

Pack the amount your child actually eats

An oversized container practically begs to be filled, Schoenfeld says—and parents often respond by packing more than their kid will eat.

As a rough starting point, she suggests about half a cup of fruit, or one small piece of whole fruit, for younger elementary-school kids, in addition to a quarter- to half-cup of vegetables and one serving of grains, such as a slice of bread or a 6-inch tortilla. Middle-schoolers might need the higher end of those ranges, while high-schoolers may eat a full cup of produce and two servings of grains.

But kids aren’t measuring cups. “They grow at different times, and their activity is very different,” Schoenfeld says. One child might spend all day running around on the playground or practicing with the marching band, while another might take medication that suppresses their appetite at lunchtime. If the same amount keeps returning, try sending less before deciding your child has rejected the food altogether.

Find out what time lunch starts

Plenty of parents don’t know what time their kid eats lunch. It's worth checking: Because schools stagger lunch by grade, some are sitting down with their sandwiches at 10:30 a.m.

That can explain a lot. A child who ate breakfast at 7 might not be hungry three and a half hours later, even though they're ravenous when they get home. Pack a little less for an early lunch, Schoenfeld suggests, and have a substantial snack ready after school. She likes options that include a real food group, such as cheese and whole-grain crackers, fruit, or carrot sticks.

“It's good to capture these kids when they're hungry and you have something good ready,” she says.

Send last night's dinner

One of the easiest ways to waste less is to pack food you already made—and already know your child likes.

Jessica Randhawa, the chef and recipe developer behind The Forked Spoon, has used vacuum-insulated stainless-steel containers for her son's lunch since preschool. In the morning, she reheats leftovers—vegetables, meat, whatever is in the fridge—and transfers them to the insulated container. In winter, she sends leftover chicken soup, one of his favorites, in a larger container with a handle. A reusable metal spork goes in with it.

Her larger point: The container matters far less than whether the food gets eaten. “The best low-waste lunch system is one that the child actually eats,” Randhawa says. “Reusable containers aren’t helpful if the food inside is repeatedly wasted.”

Open the lunchbox before the pantry

When a hungry kid walks through the door, take a look inside their lunchbox before handing over a new snack. Schoenfeld does this automatically. “I’m known for saying, ‘Oh, you’re hungry?’” Schoenfeld says. “I just open the lunchbox back up. ‘Look, it’s perfect. It’s ready to go.’”

Of course, food safety gets the final say. Shelf-stable foods—crackers, a sealed pouch, an unopened bag of chips—can go back into the pantry or be eaten later. Perishable food is a different story: If it didn’t stay cold during the school day, toss it.

Don't automatically rule out single-serve packages

An individually packaged snack isn’t always an environmental villain. If your kid brings home an unopened package of crackers, it can go straight back into the pantry. “It’s like it never came to school,” Horvitz says.

Loose crackers can be saved too, of course, but people are often more willing to toss food that’s already been opened and portioned out. Buying in bulk and using reusable containers still produces the least packaging—but a single-serve snack that gets eaten another day can be better than food that lands in the trash.

“If we're assuming a kid is eating everything in their lunchbox, we of course want to stray from individually packaged food,” Horvitz says. But if your child is unpredictable about what they'll eat, a sealed package that comes home isn't necessarily a failure. The best option is to buy in bulk and portion food into reusable containers; after that, a packaged snack that gets eaten another day can be better than loose food that lands in the trash.

The same general rule applies to drinks: A reusable bottle is best, and pouring juice from a large jug creates less packaging than sending an individual box. If you do pack a can, don't crush it afterward; Horvitz notes that intact cans are easier for recycling facilities to sort.

Consider a secondhand lunchbox

There's no rule that says a lunchbox has to be new. Click suggests checking Facebook Marketplace, Poshmark, and eBay, where last year's enthusiasm for a particular cartoon character is now available at a discount. “They have every character you can think of,” she says.

Just don't try to replace every disposable item in one frantic back-to-school shopping trip. Pick one change, get used to it, and then consider another. “Don't try to go zero-waste in one day, because you're gonna get frustrated,” Click says. “It's like saying you're gonna lose 50 lbs in one month.”

Be skeptical of “compostable” packaging

“Compostable” packaging usually needs more than a trash can—or even a backyard compost pile. Many products break down only in commercial composting facilities. Yet a 2025 national analysis found that just 18.1% of the sampled U.S. population had access to a curbside or drop-off program that accepted food scraps and at least some forms of compostable packaging. If your local program doesn’t accept these products, they’ll probably end up in a landfill.

“The word compostable doesn't mean it will compost,” Click says. She recommends choosing reusable items first. If you do buy compostable products, make sure you have a realistic way to compost them—either at home, if they’re certified for home composting, or through a local service that accepts and processes them.

Show kids where the trash goes

The most effective tool for cutting lunch waste isn't a product. It might be a field trip.

Click takes children to landfills, where the hard hats, safety vests, and enormous trucks are a hit. But the adults tend to leave with the bigger revelation. “You start to see the birds there eating trash,” she says. “You're really faced with this reality of, like, you contribute to this.”

Many recycling facilities offer free tours, and county extension offices around the country run gardening and composting programs for kids. The point isn’t to make children feel guilty about every granola-bar wrapper. It’s to help them see where their trash ends up—and why small changes matter.

“There's not a magical product that you can order online and have it shipped with two-day shipping that will solve this,” Click says. “It really comes down to healthy daily habits that you build over time.”

Dolly Parton knew a thing or two about working 9 to 5. Working out was another matter.

“If you tell me I’ve got to do an exercise routine…I dread it so bad,” she told Allure in 2021. Her workaround was “rejoicing exercises”: a freewheeling combination of gospel music, singing, stretching, shouting, and praising. “I do more ‘rejoicing’ than I do ‘working out,’” she said. She occasionally added a few floor exercises and squats—especially, as she put it, “diddly-squats.”

In doing so, she stumbled upon an important truth: Movement doesn’t have to feel like punishment to count.

“Dolly honored herself through movement,” says Michelle Segar, a lifestyle-change sustainability scientist at the University of Michigan and author of The Joy Choice: How to Finally Achieve Lasting Changes in Eating and Exercise. Parton tossed out the rules about what exercise was supposed to look like and designed something that reflected what she needed. “She knew this was for her,” Segar says. “And because it was for her, she had to design it for herself.”

That instinct—to stop chasing the supposedly perfect workout and start with movement that feels good, meaningful, or restorative—could make it easier to keep moving over time. Here’s what we all can learn from Parton’s views on exercise and movement.

“Rejoicing exercises” were quintessentially Dolly

Parton’s routine combined the forces that shaped so much of her life: faith, music, and creative self-expression. She began singing in her maternal grandfather Jake Owens’ church at age 6, and later described feeling divinely inspired as a songwriter, says Leigh H. Edwards, a professor of English at Florida State University and author of Dolly Parton, Gender, and Country Music.

“She often approached her expression on her own terms,” Edwards says, “just as she did when she created her own Dolly image and charted her own trailblazing path for her career.” Exercise was no exception.

Judy Eaton, a professor of psychology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, teaches positive psychology—the study of how people flourish, rather than only how they struggle. She calls Parton “the poster child for positive psychology.”

Many of Eaton’s students arrive knowing Parton only from Hannah Montana. Eaton introduces them to her as an example of gratitude, optimism, and authenticity; after Parton passed away, former students emailed to say they were grateful her class had helped them understand who she was as a person.

Stop looking for the “right” way to exercise

Many people have absorbed the idea that there’s one correct way to exercise. “We as a society have been taught you’re supposed to exercise in this way for this long, and your body has to feel this way,” Segar says. “You have to breathe hard.” If you can’t—or simply don’t like it—“you don’t do it.”

Public-health guidelines are useful for describing how much activity is associated with certain health benefits. But they don’t necessarily tell people how to fit movement into hectic, unpredictable lives. Fitness marketing has strengthened the idea that a workout only counts when it meets a particular standard, Segar says, creating an all-or-nothing trap: Do the “right” workout, or do nothing.

Parton built her routine around what she would actually do. Instead of deciding exercise wasn’t for her, she decided the gym-and-sweat version wasn’t for her. “We don’t start with the right way,” Segar says. “We start with our way.”

Dr. George Hennawi, physician executive director of geriatrics and senior services at MedStar Health, sees particular value in that approach as people age. When he asks his patients what it means to age successfully, their answers usually involve continuing to do what they already love—whether that’s traveling, gardening, singing, or spending time with their grandchildren.

“She flipped the equation,” Hennawi says of Parton. “What makes me happy? How do I define living successfully, living happily, aging well?” Her answer, as he sees it: “I don’t love exercise—let me bring exercise to the stuff that I love to do.”

That also means reconsidering why you’re moving. Goals like losing weight or preventing a disease years from now can be “abstract, future, often even shame-producing reasons for exercise,” Segar says. Parton’s reason was immediate and personal: She wanted to rejoice. “She’s using movement to fuel herself and live her life,” Segar says, “not to comply with doctor’s orders or to meet some standard of beauty.”

Ask how you want movement to make you feel

“Joyful movement” is a useful phrase, but Segar encourages people to expand their vocabulary. Not every worthwhile walk will make you giddy. It might instead make you feel grounded, energized, connected, or less stressed. It could help you shift out of work mode before walking through your front door—or give you five quiet minutes before the rest of the day begins.

Start by asking: “What do you want to feel while you’re moving?” Segar suggests. Then choose an activity likely to deliver that feeling.

The answer will look different for everyone. “For one person, it could be, ‘I’m going to close my door and put on headphones and dance for five minutes,’” Segar says. Someone else might grab a colleague and walk the stairs at lunch, or chase their kids around the backyard. A walk might serve an entirely different purpose: “I want to transition from my work brain to my family brain,” someone might decide, and head around the block before going home.

Think of movement as a menu rather than a prescription. “You choose what you want based on what you feel like,” Segar says—and that might change daily. “When we toss out the rules, physical movement can be the mechanism for achieving those things.”

Connecting movement to something personally meaningful can also make it more motivating. “Doing things because we have to is never the right way to get us to engage in them more,” Eaton says. “If tying it to something that’s really meaningful to you gets you doing it, then all the better.” For Parton, that meant singing gospel songs and praising—a routine she traced to her Pentecostal upbringing.

Positive emotions can create momentum, too. Eaton points to psychologist Barbara Fredrickson’s broaden-and-build theory: “If you can make yourself experience positive emotions, it makes you more willing to try new things,” she says. A favorite song might put you in the mood to start moving; movement can lift your mood further, making it easier to come back for more.

Rejoicing exercises could engage the mind along with the body, Hennawi adds. “When you’re dancing and singing, you’re stimulating your brain,” he says. “You’re stimulating your body, and you’re connecting all those dots.”

Create your own rejoicing exercises

There’s no official choreography—and prescribing one would miss the point. Choose music you love, if that helps. Dance, stretch, sway, walk, garden, or wave your arms around your living room. Try it for five minutes instead of waiting until you have time for 30. The goal is to finish feeling better than when you started.

Here’s one very Baltimore example from Hennawi: Suppose an older adult’s idea of joy is watching the Ravens and eating ice cream. Without missing a play, they could add arm raises or gentle knee and hip movements while watching on the couch. “Can you add a tiny little bit of exercise?” he asks. “We can do it incrementally, step by step.” 

Eaton suspects Parton wouldn’t have issued instructions for copying her routine. The point isn’t to move exactly like Dolly. It’s to move more like yourself. “I think she’d just say, ‘Do what feels good to you,’” she says.

There’s a healthy way to take a break during conflict. Asking for space—and specifying when the conversation will resume—can protect a relationship by giving both people time to calm down. 

The silent treatment does the opposite. Withdrawing without explanation or a plan to reconnect just creates a new conflict, leaving the person on the receiving end scrambling to figure out what went wrong.

Yet not everyone who goes quiet is trying to inflict pain. Some people shut down because they’re overwhelmed and genuinely incapable of having a productive conversation. We asked experts how to figure out what’s behind the silent treatment—and what to do when someone stops speaking to you.

First, figure out what kind of silence you’re dealing with

A healthy cooling-off period and the silent treatment can look identical from the outside, says Rachel Needle, a psychologist in West Palm Beach, Fla. Both involve someone stepping away from a conversation. What changes the meaning of that silence is whether the person explains what's happening and offers some reassurance that the conversation isn't over. Most of all, it's whether they say when they'll be back.

Someone who’s emotionally flooded might say: “I need a little time to calm down before we keep talking. Can we pick this up tonight?” Doing so gives the silence a purpose and an endpoint, Needle says. If the person needs more time when the agreed-upon hour rolls around, they can say so and suggest another time. 

That communication sends an important message, says Enid Wilson, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Sacramento: “I’m still in this relationship. I’m just taking a pause on this conversation because I need to take care of myself.” Walking away or refusing to respond leaves the other person wondering whether the conversation—or even the relationship—is over. The best version also comes with a timeframe.

People withdraw for all kinds of reasons. They might be afraid they’ll say something they regret or have learned to protect themselves by shutting down. Some people simply haven’t learned how to sit with difficult emotions or repair a disagreement, Needle says, so “silence really becomes a way to escape the discomfort, rather than having to deal with it and move through it.”

In other cases, silence is leverage. It creates uncertainty and pressures the recipient to apologize or back down. Sometimes that strategy is conscious, Needle says, and sometimes it isn't. Whatever's motivating the withdrawal, the impact on the other person can be similar. "It creates anxiety, rejection, uncertainty, and a sense of being shut out," she says.

Because it’s impossible to climb inside someone else’s head, focus on what can be observed. Did they say they needed space? Did they give some indication of when they’d return? Did they follow through—or at least check in to ask for more time? Then ask whether this is a rare rupture, or the way every disagreement ends.

Context matters, too. There's no universal number of hours that transforms a delayed response into the silent treatment. If two friends usually exchange a couple emails a month, a week of quiet probably doesn't mean much. If a partner who texts throughout the day suddenly disappears in the middle of a tense conversation, it might. Texting also strips out tone of voice and facial expression, the signals that make intent easier to interpret. "You just miss so many cues when you're not talking either on the phone or in person," Wilson says. That's why she encourages moving difficult conversations out of the text thread.

Send one clear message—and then stop chasing

When someone abruptly goes quiet, the goal is to respond without escalating the conflict while staying grounded in your own needs, Needle says. Start by calmly naming what you've observed: "I noticed that you've gone quiet. I want to understand what's going on, but I also don't want to push you if you need some space."

If the silence is unfolding over text, Wilson suggests a question instead of an accusation: "It seems like now isn't a good time to talk. Can we set a time for later tonight or sometime this week?" That gives the person room to respond while making it clear that disappearing indefinitely doesn't work for you.

Then resist the urge to send six more messages. "One of the biggest mistakes that people make is reacting to the anxiety that the silence is creating, instead of responding to the situation itself," Needle says. That anxiety might inspire repeated calls and demands to talk right now. It might inspire apologies for things you don't believe you did. Some people abandon their own needs simply to get the other person talking again; others retaliate with silence of their own.

Those reactions are understandable, but none are especially useful. Chasing might briefly relieve your distress if the person responds. But “in some cases, it can actually unintentionally reinforce an unhealthy dynamic by teaching both people that silence is what finally gets a response,” Needle says. Returning the silent treatment, meanwhile, only complicates a problem already caused by a lack of communication.

These dynamics can easily become a pursue-withdraw cycle, Wilson says. One person experiences conflict as an urgent threat to the relationship and needs to resolve it immediately. The other copes by detaching or shutting down. The more the first person calls and texts, the more conflict the withdrawer perceives—and the farther away they retreat. "If that person is conflict-avoidant, you're creating more conflict," Wilson says. "So they're going to avoid it."

The way out is to step out of the cycle, at least temporarily. That means tolerating the discomfort of not getting an immediate response, and directing all that nervous energy somewhere else. "The best and healthiest response is usually just the least reactive one," Needle says. After expressing your willingness to talk and asking when the person can reconnect, shift your attention toward what you can control. "Go for a walk, call a friend that you trust, journal, engage in another grounding activity," she suggests, rather than staring at your phone and rehearsing apologies. Doing so helps ensure the other person's silence doesn't determine when you're allowed to feel OK again.

When things are calm, make a plan for next time

When communication resumes, you might be so relieved that you simply pretend nothing happened. But unless the pattern itself is addressed, the next disagreement might end the same way.

Needle suggests leading with curiosity: “Can you help me understand what was happening for you when you needed to step away?” Once you’ve listened, describe the impact without claiming to know the person’s intent: “When I didn’t hear from you and didn’t know whether we would talk again, I felt anxious and disconnected. I’m OK with taking space during conflict, but I need to know we’ll come back to it.”

Then decide together what a future timeout will look like. Avigail Lev, a clinical psychologist in San Francisco, encourages couples to agree in advance on how either person will signal that they need a break, roughly how long it will last, what they’ll do to calm down, and who will restart the conversation. If the person needs longer, they should still check in at the agreed-upon time and provide a new endpoint. Some couples and families even choose a code word that means the conversation is pausing, Wilson says—not that the relationship is disappearing.

It's also a good idea to set a boundary. Wilson likes to think of boundaries not as walls that block people out, but as roads that show them how to stay connected: "You can be here with me, but you can't just go off-roading everywhere." A boundary does more than ask the other person to stop going silent. It clarifies what communication you require in a relationship, and what you'll do if that need repeatedly goes unmet.

One episode of withdrawal isn’t enough to judge an entire relationship, Needle says. What matters is the pattern: Does the behavior change after it’s addressed? Are both people willing to repair the rupture? Or does restoring contact always require one person to get quieter and stop raising concerns? 

If the silence continues despite repeated conversations—or leaves you feeling controlled and perpetually on edge—it might be time to seek professional help or reconsider the relationship. Healthy relationships make room for people to calm down, Needle says. They don’t leave one person indefinitely responsible for managing all the uncertainty that someone else’s silence creates.

Taylor Swift already told us she can do it with a broken heart. That might be due to grit, stamina—or a little psychological trick called a coping mantra.

When she feels stressed by her circumstances, “I go through several processes and coping mechanisms,” Swift revealed in August during the Icon Sessions, a conversation presented by the Recording Academy’s Songwriters & Composers Wing. “And one of them is saying, ‘You chose this. You chose this every day. You could have opted out of this any day before it got unmanageably big.’ And I decided not to because I love it that much.”

Even if you don’t have plans to perform in stadiums worldwide, you might recognize the peculiar frustration of being trapped by something you chose—whether that’s the job you once desperately wanted, the committee you volunteered to lead, or the dinner party you insisted on hosting. “Where people tend to get really distressed is when they feel powerless, or like something's being put upon you—you're just sort of stuck in an achy feeling,” says Jill Stoddard, a clinical psychologist in Newburyport, Mass. “But if you remind yourself, ‘Wait a minute, this is actually a choice I made, and choices do come with difficult consequences, but I'm in charge here’—that empowers you to move forward.”

Enter the coping mantra: a short, deliberate phrase you can reach for when your brain starts sprinting toward the worst-case scenario. Stress leaves little room for nuance, says Dr. Jasmine Sawhne, a psychiatrist in Los Angeles. When your body is in fight-or-flight mode, you’re not going to reason your way out of it. A mantra gives your overloaded brain something simple to grab onto—and buys you a beat to choose what to do next. Here’s how to find one that actually helps.

Make your brain an offer it can believe

“Everything will be OK” is a lovely thought. It’s also a promise about a future you can’t see—which means your anxious brain might reject it before you finish the sentence.

From a cognitive behavioral therapy perspective, predicting that everything will work out is a form of fortune-telling, says Alison McKleroy, a San Francisco therapist and author of The Self-Compassion Journal. The same goes for affirmations like “I am confident.” If you feel unsure, your brain isn’t going to buy it. You can say it 1,000 times, McKleroy says, and still not believe a word of it.

Instead of predicting a rosy outcome or forcing a new personality, a useful mantra can state a choice that’s within your control. Swift’s is essentially: I’m choosing to keep doing this, difficult parts and all. “It’s a decision you’re making out loud,” McKleroy says.

Stoddard takes a slightly different—but equally reality-based—approach. When she’s crushed by too much to do and too little time, she tells herself, “I’ll get it done. I always do.” It works because in her case, it’s true. “I wouldn’t have a PhD in psychology if I didn’t always get it done,” she says.

If you’re someone who does not, in fact, always get it done, that phrase may not be for you. This isn’t an exercise in “blowing sunshine” at yourself, Stoddard says. The best mantra is simple, specific, memorable—and true.

Figure out what your brain forgets under pressure

Rather than reflecting on which situations stress you out, try a sharper question: “What do I need to remind myself when I get uncomfortable?” suggests Joanna Hardis, a Cleveland-based therapist and author of Just Do Nothing: A Paradoxical Guide to Getting Out of Your Way.

In other words, don’t choose a generic mantra for “stress.” Identify your brain’s favorite way of making stress worse, then find a phrase that interrupts it. If you tend to predict disaster, McKleroy suggests: “I can’t know that yet” or “I don’t have a crystal ball.”

Sawhne’s stress takes a different form: She tries to solve everything at once. She runs a bicoastal psychiatry practice and has two children under 5, and she often catches herself mentally juggling five problems at the same time. Her mantra—“I don’t have to solve everything right now”—reminds her that urgency and importance aren’t the same thing. She doesn’t need the entire day, week, or situation figured out; she needs to identify what requires her attention first.

McKleroy, meanwhile, likes to over-research, add more information, and complicate projects past the point of usefulness. So she tells herself: “Let it be simple.”

“Things are usually naturally simple,” she says. “I just add stuff to it.”

Keep it short enough to say in one breath

Cap a coping mantra at about four words. When stress hits, “we just don’t have a lot of cognitive bandwidth,” Sawhne says, so you need a few words you can pull “out of your back pocket” as soon as your nervous system fires.

Shorter also means fewer words to obsess over. “Perfectionists are going to overthink it,” Hardis says. “You just want something that’s short enough that you can remember that’s going to orient you.” Her own mantra—“Discomfort, not danger”—passes the one-breath test with room to spare.

Use it to keep going while the feeling is still there

Nearly two decades ago, Hardis underwent exposure therapy for an intense fear of flying. When the plane hit turbulence, she would tell herself: “This may suck, but I can handle it.”

She still uses that mantra. During rough turbulence on a recent flight home from visiting her daughter, “I found myself saying it,” she recalls. In the past, she would have stared out the window, listened for every ominous noise, and asked a flight attendant if the plane was OK. This time, she calmly repeated her mantra and kept reading. “It helped me get through the flight and do what I knew I needed to do,” she says.

The fear was still there; it simply didn’t dictate her next move. “The goal in anxiety treatment isn’t to make the feeling go away,” Hardis says. It’s to help you decide what to do while the feeling is still there.

Borrow one—and make it sound like you

There are no bonus points for originality here. Anna Elton, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Palm Beach, Fla., and author of The Formula of Desire, uses “just keep swimming.” She borrowed it from Finding Nemo, which she watched with her kids. “That’s why it’s easy to remember,” she says. She also turns to “If it were easy, everyone would do it” when a project proves harder than expected. Her most exuberant mantra is a call-and-response: “Who is awesome? I’m awesome.” “I do it all the time,” she says. 

Once you settle on a potential mantra, say it out loud. Does it sound like something you’d actually tell yourself—or something embroidered on a throw pillow you’d try to hide? McKleroy recommends trying slightly different versions until one lands. “Brave” and “courageous” might look interchangeable on paper, for example, but one could feel much more natural coming out of your mouth.

You’ll know you’re getting close when the words produce even a small shift. The right phrase might bring “a little hit of relief,” McKleroy says, or make a spiral lose some of its momentum. If your brain instantly rejects it, change a word or scale it down. “Let it be simple,” for example, might become “Let it be simpler.”

Once you find one that works, practice it before you need it. Stoddard encourages clients to try new coping tools during low-stakes moments, when their emotions are relatively mellow. Call your mantra to mind when you’re running five minutes late, opening a mildly stressful email, or sitting down to a task you’ve been avoiding. Otherwise, summoning an unfamiliar phrase in the middle of a crisis will be “an uphill battle,” she says.

Put it where the problem lives

Years ago, when McKleroy was trying to stop procrastinating, she hung “Do it now” in big letters above her kitchen sink. “That was my command,” she says. “Just do the dishes.” After enough repetition, “do it now” stopped being a mantra and became a habit, and now she rarely procrastinates.

These days, “Let it be simple” hangs above her desk—prime territory for over-researching and adding just one more thing. McKleroy calls this “keeping it in existence,” or displaying the reminder exactly where you’ll need it.

That might mean taping your mantra to your computer monitor, writing it on the bathroom mirror, turning it into your phone lock screen, or putting it on the front of your journal. “If you’re really anxious, your mind’s not going to remember—it’s going to go blank,” Hardis says. A visual cue ensures the words are waiting for you when you need them.

Your reminder doesn’t even have to be made of words: McKleroy suggests drawing a circle on a stone and carrying it in your pocket or leaving it on the bathroom counter. To her, the circle represents simplicity. “A circle on a rock would be enough,” she says, to remind her to “let it be simple.” You could similarly choose a meaningful color, shape, or object. And—since this entire exercise began with Swift—you could even spell yours out on a friendship bracelet. 

Most people leave the monkey bars behind with childhood. Yet hanging from a bar—right-side up, don’t worry—may be one youthful habit worth picking back up, especially if you spend your days hunched over your desk and phone. (Guilty.)

“We look at kids on a playground—what are they doing?” says Australian physiotherapist Daniel Vadnal, owner of FitnessFAQs, who posts instructive videos on Instagram and YouTube. “They don’t need to be told to hang. They just intuitively do it.”

A few years ago, Vadnal persuaded his grandmother, now 93, to try a supported hang. That means gripping a bar overhead with straight arms but keeping your feet planted on the floor, rather than dangling your entire body weight. She was skeptical: She hadn’t even raised her arms fully overhead since she was a kid. But after just 30 seconds, she felt taller and looser—and found it easier to reach her kitchen cabinets.

Here’s what hanging can do for your body, how to keep your feet planted while you build strength, and why just 30 seconds is long enough. 

It gives your upper body a stretch

At its simplest, hanging means gripping a secure overhead pull-up bar—the kind that can be installed in a doorway—with straight arms while supporting some or all of your body weight. You remain right-side up: Your hands are above your head, and your feet point toward the floor or remain planted on it. Hanging upside down, known as inversion, is an entirely different exercise. “It’s fairly simple, but it’s not easy,” says Hazel Anderson, a physical therapist and faculty member at the University of St. Augustine for Health Sciences in Austin.

Whether your feet stay planted for support or lift off the floor, there are two ways to position your upper body. “The passive hang is, as the name suggests, just relaxed,” Vadnal says. “You’re letting nature, gravity, your body do whatever it wants.” Your shoulders move toward your ears, creating a stretch through the shoulders, arms, and trunk.

An active hang requires more effort. “You want to think of trying to bring your shoulder blades down away from your ears,” Vadnal says. That engages the muscles around the shoulders and back, creating more stability. Your elbows remain straight—and your feet can remain planted or off the floor—in either type of hang.

Vadnal considers passive and active hangs opposite ends of a spectrum. A passive hang still requires enough muscle effort to remain safely attached to the bar; an active one involves “really making a concerted effort” to hold yourself in position. He recommends choosing the amount of engagement that feels most comfortable for your body.

Reaching overhead may feel especially satisfying after all those hours slumped over your desk. Hanging “stretches all the tight muscles that we tend to have through the pecs, through the triceps on the back of the arms, as well as the lats,” Vadnal says. You’ll likely find it leaves you feeling a little taller—and less scrunched up through the shoulders.

That doesn’t mean 30 seconds on a bar will permanently correct your posture or treat back or shoulder pain; those claims haven’t been established in strong clinical trials. But hanging moves your upper body into a position it might not visit very often, which helps explain why people often step down feeling looser.

It makes your grip work

A hang might look passive, but your hands and forearms are busy keeping you attached to the bar. “First and foremost, it supports grip endurance,” Anderson says. “It’s helping with grip strength, but more with the endurance of being able to hold on to the bar.”

That endurance is useful for everything from carrying groceries to working toward a pull-up. “The hands, fingers, and forearms serve as a link to our back,” Vadnal says. Strengthening that link helps prepare you to support—and eventually pull—your body weight.

Research on short, recreational hangs is limited, and most studies involve climbers. In a small 2026 study, 11 climbers hung on until their grip gave out. As they got tired, their shoulders and other upper-body muscles increasingly pitched in to keep them on the bar.

Another randomized trial found that when experienced climbers hung by their fingers for eight weeks, with progressively more weight attached to the body, some measures of grip strength improved. The study involved extra weight and a climbing hold—not beginners attempting a relaxed 30-second hang—but it supports the idea that regularly asking your hands to hold you up can make them better at the job.

Grip strength is also widely used as a marker of overall health. “We do know that grip strength is correlated with longevity,” Vadnal says. In a study of nearly 140,000 adults across 17 countries, weaker grip was associated with a higher risk of death and cardiovascular disease.

That doesn’t mean hanging longer will make you live longer, Vadnal adds. Think of it as one useful signal—not a path to immortality.

Your feet can stay on the floor

Beginners don’t need to hover heroically above the ground. When you’re starting out, the bar is—quite literally—low. “I love the addition of a little step stool or platform,” Anderson says. Hold the bar with both hands, bend your knees slightly, and keep enough weight in your feet that the stretch feels manageable. You can gradually allow your arms to support more of you as you become comfortable.

“You definitely don’t need to jump straight to 30-second hangs all at once,” Anderson says. She recommends starting with a 10-second supported hang and repeating it three to five times, resting briefly between attempts. From there, work toward the 30-second goal. Vadnal likes three 30-second sets, but only after choosing a variation easy enough to complete with control.

Begin with your hands about shoulder-width apart. “That’s most comfortable for pretty much everyone,” Vadnal says, though you can move your hands wider or narrower based on what feels best. Wrap your thumbs underneath the bar to make your grip more secure.

If the typical overhand position bothers your shoulders, try a neutral grip, with your palms facing each other. Many gyms have parallel handles that allow for it, and gymnastics rings will rotate to accommodate your joints. Vadnal calls it “probably the most friendly position for the shoulders.”

Decide whether a passive or slightly more active hang feels better, and don’t worry about matching someone else’s position. Forcing your shoulders farther overhead than they can comfortably go may leave them sore or irritated, Vadnal says. Let your range of motion improve gradually instead.

Most importantly, remember to breathe. Anderson advises using “slow, controlled breaths” and making sure you’re not holding your air in, whether you’re a beginner or an expert. It’s easy to get so focused on staying on the bar that your whole body clenches up; a few steady breaths can help you relax into the hang.

“Don’t chase the clock,” Anderson says. If your form changes or you can no longer control the hang, put your feet down, rest, and try again.

Know when to let go

Hanging should feel like work—not like you’re about to injure yourself. “We should feel a stretching sensation; we should feel fatigued,” Vadnal says. “We shouldn’t feel pain.” Put your feet down if you experience sharp or persistent pain, numbness, tingling, or weakness.

Those symptoms are signs to stop, not to push through. Talk to a doctor or a physical therapist before trying again. Some people should seek guidance before they ever reach for the bar: Anderson recommends medical clearance for anyone who recently had shoulder surgery or an injury involving the neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, or trunk. The same applies to people with shoulder instability, pain when reaching overhead, cardiovascular concerns, or uncontrolled high blood pressure. 

Osteoporosis doesn’t automatically make hanging off-limits. But because a fall could have more serious consequences, Anderson says, it’s particularly important to keep your feet supported and get personalized guidance.

Anderson recommends practicing two or three times a week on nonconsecutive days, which allows the muscles to recover. There’s no need to progress from zero hanging to auditioning for Cirque du Soleil. Add time or body weight gradually, and take a day off if your hands, forearms, or shoulders remain unusually sore.

If you like hanging, Vadnal suggests keeping a bar somewhere you’ll regularly see it, like in your laundry room. “It’s like daily hygiene,” he says. “You brush your teeth; hanging is a good thing, too.”

Your therapist has probably encouraged you to have difficult conversations, advocate for your needs, and resist the urge to avoid things that make you anxious. That’s all well and good—until, one day, the difficult conversation is with them.

If therapy doesn’t feel useful anymore, or if you’ve realized that you and your therapist simply aren’t the right match, it can be tempting to outsource the breakup to the cancel-appointment button. Yet unless there’s an ethical, boundary, or safety concern, experts say it’s usually worth having a conversation with your therapist before ending the relationship. It might improve the therapy. It might also help you find someone better suited to you, or simply allow you to leave without feeling guilty about ghosting the person who knows exactly why you tend to ghost people.

Speaking up could also save you from having to begin the search from scratch. “Your therapist could be the gateway to your next great therapist,” says Ryan Culkin, a licensed professional counselor and chief counselor officer at Thriveworks, which provides therapy and psychiatry services. They might be able to adjust their approach—or recommend someone who would suit you better.

Even if you already know you’re finished, breaking the news doesn’t require a dramatic confrontation or an elaborate defense. Here’s how to decide whether it’s time to call it quits—and how to do it painlessly.

Figure out what kind of discomfort you’re feeling

Good therapy isn’t necessarily easy. “Sometimes therapy can be really uncomfortable, but it can be incredibly productive,” says Eli Kraiem, a clinical psychologist in New York. A therapist might challenge an assumption you’re attached to, point out a pattern you’d rather not see, or encourage you to do something that scares you. Feeling unsettled after a session doesn’t mean it went badly.

Michael G. Wetter, a clinical psychologist in Los Angeles, prefers this question: “What is the discomfort accomplishing?” Productive discomfort generally leads to insight, reflection, behavioral change, or progress toward goals you and your therapist have agreed on, he says. If it’s a poor fit, you might notice you leave therapy feeling misunderstood or have the same conversation week after week without much meaningful movement.

Juliann Siwicki, a licensed clinical professional counselor in Vero Beach, Fla., thinks about it this way: “Are you uncomfortable because you’re talking about something hard? Or because you feel like you’re having coffee with someone and not getting help? Those are two different things.”

You should be able to name what you're working toward—a pattern you're trying to break, a decision you're stuck on, a reaction you'd like to change—and to notice how much airtime your therapist is taking up. "A therapist can share something about themselves if it helps the client," Siwicki says. "It becomes too much when the client is spending the session listening to the therapist's stories, or feels like they need to take care of the therapist."

Kamran Eshtehardi, a clinical psychologist in Pasadena, Calif., has heard the far end of that spectrum. One client described a previous therapist who "thought it would be helpful to tell me about when they cheated on their wife"—including that his wife left him, and that he later saw an escort. "And I'm like, ‘What? Like, a therapist told you?’" Eshtehardi says. "Those are major red flags."

What was once a good fit can also change over time. A therapist who helped you through a crisis might not be right for your next stage. "A great therapist might not be great for you," Culkin says. "It's kind of like dating—you're not going to get it right the first time every time."

Even finding that “the therapist gets on your nerves” doesn’t necessarily mean you should quit, says Eshtehardi. A rupture doesn’t mean the therapy has “rotted on the vine,” he says, and progress sometimes develops “underneath the surface” before reaching a tipping point. But if you’ve explained what you need and nothing changes—or there’s no sense of progress—your frustration deserves attention.

Serious boundary violations, unethical behavior, or anything that makes you feel unsafe are different. You don’t need to attempt a repair before leaving, nor do you owe the therapist another session.

Say what isn’t working

If you’re open to continuing with your therapist, with the appropriate changes, describe what you’ve noticed and need—without turning the conversation into a performance review.

Try: “Our sessions have started to feel conversational, and I need more structure, feedback, and therapeutic insight. Can we talk about that?” Or: “I’m not sure what I’m working toward. Could we revisit my goals?” Culkin suggests language as straightforward as: “That didn’t land with me,” “I want to try something different,” or “I really liked when you did this.”

Eshtehardi recalls a client telling him that the usual sympathetic responses—“I’m so sorry to hear that” or “That must have been so hard”—didn’t work for them. “I just want to get stuff on the table and say, ‘OK, what’s going on here? How do we work with this?’” the client told him. That feedback helped Eshtehardi calibrate his approach. “I’m not saying it’s necessarily the client’s job to help train the therapist,” he says, but clients can explain what they’re looking for and how they prefer to work.

If you know you’re ready to leave 

Sometimes you’re not interested in recalibrating the relationship—you’ve already decided to end it. In that case, the goal isn’t to persuade your therapist that you have a good enough reason to go. It’s simply to communicate your decision in whatever way feels most manageable. 

You don’t have to deliver the news face-to-face. A call, email, or text is fine: “I don’t want therapy and the therapeutic relationship to be another source of anxiety for my clients,” Eshtehardi says. For someone accustomed to conflict or pushback, sending “I’m sorry, this isn’t working for me” and receiving a calm response can itself be therapeutic. You might realize, he says, that “maybe there’s a way to connect with people that doesn’t feel like I’m always doing the wrong thing.”

Eshtehardi also encourages clients who feel guilty to view the conversation as an opportunity to “practice trusting that someone else is going to be OK,” and trusting themselves to make the right decision. Your therapist’s response will provide useful information. A therapist who responds with openness and a willingness to adjust is giving you one kind of information; defensiveness or guilt-tripping gives you another. If the therapist acts wounded, Eshtehardi thinks of it as a “double whammy.” It might hurt, but it also “confirms that you’ve made the correct decision to stop therapy.”

You don’t need to build a case for your decision. “When it comes to trying to find the right fit, I don’t think clients should have to worry about having to justify their perspective,” Eshtehardi says. He suggests keeping the message simple: “I don’t think it’s the right fit. I’d like to stop sessions, and I really appreciate your time. Thank you.”

And try not to assume you’ve devastated them. Therapists are trained to handle patients leaving, Kraiem says. If yours can’t tolerate it, “then there’s a problem with the therapist, not with the patients.”

Make the transition easier on yourself

If you need consistent support, try to line up a new therapist before leaving your current one. Ask your therapist if they can recommend someone with a different style or specialty.

Before booking, confirm the new therapist accepts your insurance. “There’s nothing worse than getting through that first session” only to discover they don’t, Culkin says. You can also ask how they structure sessions, establish goals, and respond when a client disagrees. Be candid about what helped the first time around, what didn’t, and what’s important to you this time. Culkin encourages therapists to ask what clients appreciated about past providers and what they wish had been different. “Those are gold answers,” he says.

It’s not mandatory, but Kraiem recommends a wrap-up session, if you’re comfortable: “Let’s have one session to reflect on the experiences, process how you’ve improved, how you’ve grown through therapy, and maybe areas that still need improvement,” he says. 

Ask the practices about transferring relevant records. You’ll typically sign an authorization specifying what can be shared. Whether you want a direct handoff depends on why you’re leaving, Eshtehardi says. If you felt misunderstood, the former therapist’s perspective could “muddy the waters,” and you might prefer a clean start. If your therapist is referring you to someone with more specialized expertise, a conversation could help them get up to speed more quickly. In that case, Eshtehardi tells clients, “I’ll tell you everything I tell them so you know what they know.”

Finally, cancel future appointments and settle outstanding balances or other loose ends. Eshtehardi suggests asking: “Are there any last things we need to do?” If medication is part of your care, coordinate with your prescribing clinician about refills.

Changing therapists isn’t proof that treatment failed. Sometimes successful therapy means repairing a strained relationship. Other times, it means recognizing that the relationship has run its course—and using the difficult-conversation skills you’ve practiced to say so.

At one of their first dinners together, Lindsey Hall watched the man she was dating take enormous bites, talk with his mouth full, and—horror of horrors—burp loudly without seeming to register it. The evening was supposed to feel romantic. Instead, Hall remembers thinking: “Have I made a mistake?”

She tried to dismiss his behavior as a minor incompatibility. But it continued, meal after meal, and gradually soured her feelings and attraction toward him. Table manners had never seemed like a priority until then. “I didn’t realize how important it was to me until I dated someone who just … doesn’t have it,” Hall says.

Terrible table manners might sound like a trivial complaint. But eating is one of the most routine things we do with other people, and a habit that inspires disgust three times a day can quickly become difficult to shrug off. The challenge is figuring out whether—and how—to address bad dining habits without making the person feel humiliated.

Here’s what psychologists and etiquette experts suggest.

First, consider whether the behavior is actually rude

Table manners can feel like universal rules, but they’re shaped by culture, family, and upbringing. “We talk about them as though they’re laws of physics,” says Gwenhwyfar Dunne-Henry, a psychologist in Dubai and author of Unbind Me: How to Break the Rules That Keep You Small. “They’re not. They’re social agreements.”

Before correcting someone, think about whether they’re being inconsiderate or simply behaving differently from the way you were taught. Slurping noodles, eating with your hands, and keeping your elbows on the table, for example, can carry different meanings depending on where and how someone grew up.

That doesn’t mean you have to enjoy every habit you encounter. Talking while chewing, spraying food, or sharing utensils while sick can interfere with other people’s comfort or hygiene, says Virginia Chow, a clinical psychologist in Montreal. The point is to understand exactly what’s bothering you—and avoid turning a difference in upbringing into a judgment about someone’s character.

That’s especially important because people rarely react only to the offending behavior. “We argue about what we think it means,” Dunne-Henry says. Someone chews with their mouth open, and you might start thinking they’re selfish, oblivious, or disrespectful. “If they don’t notice this,” she says, “what else don’t they notice?”

Sometimes the habit also becomes a symbol of every other irritation in the relationship. Perhaps the person also interrupts you, leaves messes behind, and routinely takes the last helping without asking. Suddenly, as Dunne-Henry puts it, “the bread roll is carrying a lot of emotional responsibility.”

Hall experienced that escalation firsthand. Once her former partner’s table manners began bothering her, she started noticing every other habit that irritated her. “I think you just start becoming hypercritical,” she says—a reaction she disliked in herself. 

Decide whether it’s your place to say something

Correcting another adult’s table manners is inherently awkward, so Stayce Wagner, a business-etiquette consultant in Jacksonville, Fla., recommends letting an isolated lapse go. Everyone occasionally speaks before swallowing or reaches all the way across the table for something. A repeated habit is different—but even then, your relationship with the person matters most.

A partner or child is one thing. A close relative or trusted friend might also appreciate knowing, particularly if you have the kind of relationship in which you would alert each other to spinach in your teeth. But correcting an acquaintance, coworker, or stranger is rarely worth the embarrassment it could cause.

“Correcting the terrible table manners of someone who isn’t your partner—or your child—is social and relationship dynamite,” Wagner says. Most people ultimately decide whether they can tolerate the habit, find a way around it, or stop sharing meals with the person.

Chow suggests asking yourself whether the behavior is truly affecting you or merely annoying you. “Not every annoyance requires a conversation,” she says. With a stranger, speaking up generally only makes sense when there’s a legitimate health or safety concern—someone who is visibly sick using a shared serving utensil, for example. In that case, focus on solving the immediate problem rather than critiquing their manners: “Would you mind using a clean serving spoon? I’d really appreciate it.”

Bring it up away from the table

If you do decide to say something, resist correcting the person in the moment—particularly if other people are present. “It’s a soul-crushing experience for most people to have their manners corrected in public,” Wagner says.

Instead, choose a private, neutral moment when neither of you is eating. Ask permission to broach an uncomfortable subject, and then describe one specific behavior. Avoid sweeping declarations like “Your table manners are disgusting” or “You eat like an animal.” Those statements turn a changeable habit into an indictment of the entire person.

Chow suggests phrasing it like this: “Can I mention something a little awkward? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but sometimes when you’re talking while eating, a bit of food comes out. I figured you’d probably want to know because I’d want someone to tell me.”

That wording assumes the person isn’t doing it intentionally and gives them a face-saving reason to hear you out: You’re sharing information they might want to have, not delivering a verdict on their upbringing.

When the habit is directly affecting your ability to enjoy meals together, Wagner recommends being honest about it—without describing the person as repulsive. Try: “I know you don’t realize it, but sometimes you talk with food in your mouth, and I find it affects my ability to enjoy the meal. Would you be open to me pointing it out when it happens?”

The distinction is small but important: You’re explaining how the behavior affects you, rather than insisting that your standards are objectively correct.

Hall says she wishes she had been that straightforward. At first, she tried making jokes or telling her partner that she couldn’t understand him while his mouth was full—an approach she now suspects sounded passive-aggressive. “I wish I had been a little bit more direct about how much it was affecting my attraction,” she says. 

Agree on how you’ll handle it next time

Table manners are habits, which means one conversation probably won’t make a lifelong behavior disappear. If the person is receptive, ask how they’d like you to alert them if it happens again. You might agree on a word, gesture, or subtle signal that won’t embarrass them in front of other people.

In less intimate relationships, Wagner recommends finding subtle, polite ways to avoid encouraging the behavior. If someone begins answering a question immediately after taking a bite, for example, you could say: “Take your time and enjoy your food—I can wait.”

What’s unlikely to help, meanwhile, is glaring, recoiling, kicking someone under the table, or making snide remarks. “Jokes, sarcasm, public corrections, or visibly expressing disgust probably won’t change the behavior in the long run,” Wagner says. “But it will damage the relationship.”

Even the most tactful conversation might embarrass the person; there’s no magic phrase that makes criticism delightful to receive. “The goal is to not intentionally embarrass or insult them,” Wagner says.

Know when to adapt instead

Sometimes the kindest and easiest choice is to work around the behavior. Wagner has encountered friends and colleagues who double-dipped, for example, but she never corrected them. She simply ordered her own appetizer or transferred what she wanted to a separate plate before they began eating. The behavior bothered her, but she decided the relationships mattered more.

That calculus changes when the offender is a partner and the habit makes you dread eating together. If you’ve raised the issue respectfully and the person repeatedly dismisses your discomfort, the problem may no longer be their chewing. It may be that you don’t feel heard or considered—and that’s a larger conversation.

That, Hall says, was ultimately the problem in her relationship. Her partner didn’t merely struggle to change an ingrained habit; he dismissed her concern as evidence that she was too demanding. “He didn’t really value how I felt about it,” she says.

Etiquette, after all, isn’t really about mastering a complicated rulebook. Instead of tallying another person’s violations, Dunne-Henry suggests asking yourself a simpler question: “How easy am I to share a meal with?” That standard applies to everyone at the table. It means extending some grace when another person’s habits annoy you—and caring enough to listen when someone you love tells you that one of yours is making meals difficult. 

Lizzie Post still remembers the time she walked into a party and an acquaintance greeted her with exciting news: “You had a baby!”

“Nope,” Post said.

“You got engaged!”

Nope again.

“You got married!”

“I’m going to the bar,” Post replied.

Post, co-president of the Emily Post Institute and Emily Post’s great-great-granddaughter, knew the woman meant well. She had apparently heard that something momentous had happened—it hadn’t—and cycled through three incorrect milestones trying to identify it. Fortunately, she eventually stopped guessing: a relief for everyone involved.

Life is full of faux pas, but even when you’re the one making it, you can dig your way out of social quicksand most of the time. Here’s what psychologists and etiquette experts suggest saying, plus when to stop talking.

First, take your foot out of your mouth

Your immediate reaction after saying something you regret might be to turn fire-truck red. Then comes the urge to reach for the very thing that got you into trouble in the first place: more words. People often try to explain, defend, or excuse their misfired remark, says Karina Schumann, a social psychologist and associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh who studies apologies and conflict resolution. The instinct is self-protective: They’re frantically trying to repair their image in the other person’s eyes.

“What actual repair looks like is to shift the attention to the other person,” Schumann says. “Put aside this very strong need that you have to repair your self-image, and instead think: ‘If I were on the receiving end of this, what would I need to hear?’” 

Pause, acknowledge the impact of what you said, and take responsibility. She suggests phrasing it like this: “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed.” Or: “I can see that my joke was insensitive. I apologize.” 

Then take a breath. More words will still be available later, should the situation require them.

Match the apology to the offense

A minor blunder and a painful faux pas shouldn’t trigger matching productions of remorse. Forget an acquaintance’s name? A quick “I’m sorry—please remind me” may be enough. Ask when someone is due when she isn’t pregnant, or make a joke that accidentally lands on a painful subject? That calls for a direct acknowledgment of the harm, without trying to laugh it off, and perhaps a longer conversation if the other person wants one.

The person responsible isn’t always the best judge of what it will take to repair the situation. Schumann points to a phenomenon researchers call the “magnitude gap”: People who cause harm tend to view it as less severe and less damaging to the relationship than the people on the receiving end do. The offender may think, I apologized; this should be over. The other person may still be wondering how the offender could fail to understand how much it hurt. 

Don’t turn an apology into an autobiography

An apology doesn’t require an origin story, a director’s commentary, or a guided tour of everything happening inside the offender’s head.

“Blame is like a hot potato,” says Jennifer Thomas, a psychologist and co-author of The 5 Apology Languages: The Secret to Healthy Relationships. Defensive responses—including “I was only joking,” “I didn’t mean it that way,” and “Why did you take it so personally?”—toss it back to the injured person. They minimize the harm, gloss over the offender’s intentions, or suggest the other person is simply too sensitive. 

An explanation can sometimes make what happened easier to understand, Schumann says, but it has to provide context without weakening responsibility. Lead with: “I shouldn’t have done that. There’s no excuse for it.” Then ask whether an explanation would be helpful.

A digital faux pas calls for the same restraint. If you send a text to the wrong person with information you wouldn’t have divulged to them otherwise, Post suggests writing: “I’m so sorry. Clearly that text wasn’t meant for you—and I probably shouldn’t have been sending it anyway.” Then leave it at that.

Resist the apology encore

For a minor, accidental blunder—maybe you stuck your toe in your mouth instead of your whole foot—one sincere apology is generally enough. “The more you apologize, the more it’s about you,” Post says. That means no apology cookies, no anguished message the following morning, and no campaign to extract an official declaration that everything is fine.

Serious harm is different. Schumann cautions against treating every apology as a “one-shot thing,” as though finding the perfect words should settle the matter. The other person may need a longer conversation, an effort to make amends, or simply more time.

“The timing of any forgiveness should stay wholly in the hands of the person who was hurt,” Thomas says. An apology offers them a choice, not a deadline.

What if you don’t realize you made a faux pas until hours or days later? It’s usually better to address it than hope the other person forgot, therapist Elika Dadsetan-Foley says. Try: “I’ve been thinking about what I said yesterday. I realize it may have been insulting, and I’m sorry I didn’t recognize that in the moment.”

The next time you meet, act normal

The next time you run into the neighbor you assumed was sick but who had merely gone makeup-free, or the acquaintance who received a text that was definitely not meant for them, offer a friendly greeting. Avoiding the person can make one uncomfortable exchange feel like a permanent rupture; bringing it up again can give a dying embarrassment fresh oxygen.

Keep the story to yourself, rather than retelling it as evidence of what a hopeless fool you are. “You may think that’s you throwing yourself under the bus, but you’re dragging the other person with you,” Post says. Your self-deprecation may get a laugh, but it also makes the other person’s embarrassment public.

Fortunately, most faux pas don’t require a lifelong of self-flagellation. If you’ve apologized sincerely and the other person seems ready to move on, follow their lead. “We all get stuff wrong from time to time,” Post says. Sometimes recovering gracefully means making amends. Other times, it means saying sorry—and letting everyone get on with the party.