#and then a low level sense of shame for being invested enough to feel stress

[bitchslapblastoids]

t god the rpftourney is almost over this matchup has created a low level of constant stress on here that I don’t need in my life yk?

[dracosaurusrex]

Kintsugi: Imperfectly Perfect (Draco x Reader)

“Kintsugi is the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold — built on the idea that in embracing flaws and imperfections, you can create an even stronger, more beautiful piece of art.”

- Tiffany Ayuda

Summary:In which Y/N teaches a broken Draco Malfoy how to mend himself and embrace the scars that haunt him.

Wordcount: 10.3k

Genre: Angst/Fluff; Postwar AU

Warnings: Descriptions of depression; self-degredation; sexual themes but no smut

A/N: Hi! This is my first time writing a postwar AU. I was always afraid of doing so out of fear that I would mistakenly portray Draco, but I guess this can be a rite of passage in a way aha. With that being said, here’s my attempt! I hope you like it :D Feedback is very much appreciated!!

The sound of an alarm clock breaks the peace that had manifested within the darkness of the room. One eye creaks open, followed by the other, and a body raises itself to greet the day. 

The boy lifts his sheets gently, allowing the cold air to engulf his skin, to wake him, to pull him into the reality of yet another morning. 

The pads of his feet are the next to awaken as he hoists himself out of bed, meeting the frigid floor beneath him. He plods across the expanse of space, only to take notice of his reflection in the mirror.

Draco Malfoy, once boisterous, prideful, loud, and arrogant, had been reduced to a shell. One that lived by drifting through the motions of each passing day. It showed through the dark circles apparent under his eyes, the frown that resided on his lips, and his overall gaunt appearance. The thrill that was once characteristic of his youth had spilled through his cracks, leaving him empty and seemingly unrepairable; and no other perspective of his experience could convince him otherwise. 

The second wizarding war took too much from him so early on. It started with his father, the man he had ardently looked up to, who he desired so much to please. Lucius’s arrest put the young boy on the forefront of the Death Eaters’ activities, placing an unbearable weight on his shoulders. From that point on, it wasn’t long until the mischievous smile left him, only to be replaced with panicked eyes, increased stress levels, and absolutely no peace of mind. The boy had his entire life on a tightrope, constantly pulling strings to survive.

The result of such was the immense realization of guilt pooling from the sights of Hogwarts in shambles, the lifeless bodies of those he was once acquainted with, and the shame of literally walking away from it all. 

Nightmares were also frequent visitors. Besides those that embodied remnants of the war, Draco was almost always confronted by the tauntings of his wrongs: the way he poorly treated others, his stuck-up sense of superiority, the foul slur that he once used so freely--they all haunted him with no end, and all he wanted to do was take everything back. The boy has so often degraded his character since then, describing himself with words such as ‘worthless’, ‘loathsome’, ‘putrid’--the list goes on. He carried his beating heart as though it was dead weight, wanting so desperately to discard the regret that compounded on itself through the years. He was broken, and had no hope of being fixed. 

It was also needless to say that the family dynamic had changed for the Malfoy’s; especially since they often stayed within the confines of the property. Narcissa had been diligent in eradicating the place of all things that harbored any signs of Voldemort’s occupation--opening curtains, tending to her garden, changing up the plans for the interior design. Lucius, on the other hand, often occupied himself in his study, simply abiding by the plans for change that his wife had made. He still invested in his social connections, actively making donations to charities and hospitals that had been established as a result of the war. The act helped shed some light on their image, however any interaction that was to be made with the world outside was done through Draco as representative of the family name.

Fortunately, he managed to keep his mind silent in the mornings. As he walked through the vast hallways he would take note of the way light had poured into the manor, admiring the charm that it brought to its nooks and crannies. The quaint atmosphere that was characteristic of these corridors were peaceful, and managed to calm his thoughts albeit temporarily. 

As soon as he entered the dining room, Narcissa beckoned him to sit with her and his father. 

“Draco, darling, come have some breakfast.” Without much response, he obeys, taking the spot across from her. She placed his favorites on a platter, and observed him as he nibbled on the food in front of him. After several minutes of silence, she pulled an ivory-colored envelope from the pocket of her robe and slid it to him. With food still mounted on his utensils, the boy glanced at the gold details that embellished its corners.

“We’ve been invited to an art gala hosted by the Ministry. The details are inside.” She said.

“I’ll be sure to be in attendance, mother.” He confirmed before resuming his breakfast. The woman casted a worried look at him before turning to Lucius. Things could never go back to the way they once were.

--

The art gala was held on a Saturday evening, and Draco found himself standing in front of a finely decorated building. An air of aristocracy and luxury loomed within the environment--it was an energy that he had been surrounded by all his life. Large columns aligned its front. A red carpet stemming from the entrance had been rolled out, sweeping along a flight of stairs. Familiar faces of esteemed socialites were seen making their way up the steps. Banners had been hung, indicating the gala and a live auction as highlights of the day’s events. 

His only job was to engage in civilized conversation, connect with other high-standing figures, and expand the family network. Simply put, he was there to look pretty.

The feeling of dread overcame him at the thought of immersing himself in socialization. With a begrudging sigh, he straightened his back, briefly smoothened out his suit, and adjusted his cufflinks before trudging up the stairs. Eyes tracked his every step. Despite his emotional wellbeing, the boy still managed to clean up well, creating a facade to those around him. He didn’t bask in the glory, though. He knew he was handsome, he knew he was wealthy, but looks and money were no longer sufficient enough to help him tend to the emptiness he felt on the inside.

The gala itself didn’t begin until 6:00 PM, which was in an hour. Therefore, in hopes to kill time, Draco aimlessly walked through the art displayed for the auction to be held later that night. He carefully observed the numerous crafts with great scrutiny. Paintings were created with much detail--many of them embodying styles from the varying art periods. Sculptures paying great detail to the human body littered the main floor. Hand-crafted furniture were set on display as well, showcasing elaborate ornaments and designs. Mother would like these. He thought. He continued plodding across the exhibit, typically stopping for a mere minute for every submission before walking away. 

It was when he took sight of a humble set of ceramics that he actually stopped to stare. The collection consisted of bowls and pots ranging from small to medium sizes. However, what caught his attention were the traces of gold that coursed through their shapes. They took the form of cracks, which looked too beautiful, too flawless to be such--he couldn’t comprehend them ever being broken at all.

“Do you like them?” A light voice startles him from his thoughts. Standing next to him is a bright-eyed girl whose face he vaguely remembers.

“Y/N Y/L/N? What are you doing here?” He dismisses her question and looks at her with disbelief laced through his voice. The girl was in Ravenclaw when they were still in Hogwarts. Due to the difference in houses and friend groups, there was rarely any interaction between them. Nevertheless, he’s heard countless praises for her artistic talent even as a student, therefore reserved a tinge of respect for her reputation.

“Draco Malfoy! It’s been such a long time!” She beams at him. A breathy laugh escapes him as a polite smile settles on his lips.

“Definitely has been. Were you eyeing this set as well?” He glanced back at the ceramics, contemplating on bidding for them in the auction. The sight of them evoked a warm, admirable energy within him, as though they called for his presence.

“Heavens, no. I actually made them.” Y/N took notice of the way he glanced at them, and shyly rubbed the back of her neck. The boy turned to her with eyes widened in awe of her brilliance—the smile of politeness immediately transitioning to one of sincerity.

“You made these? They’re beautiful!” The comment brought heat to her cheeks. 

“Draco, please. You flatter me so.” 

“I’ll be taking these home without a doubt.” He reassures her. In the moment that he says so, he immediately takes notice of her appearance. Her hair was slicked into a low bun. Her makeup gave her a pleasant dewy look. Gold accessories accentuates her deep emerald evening gown, which only emphasizes her curves as it flows down her body. He couldn’t recall her ever being attractive when they were students—she had always been clad in blue. But, tonight proved that green was definitely her color.

“You look lovely, by the way.” He complimented as his eyes glossed over her. She bit her lip in response to the butterflies that formed in her stomach.

“You always had a way with words didn’t you, Malfoy?” The melodic laugh that she produced, in turn, caused his heart to skip a beat.

“I admit I was a prat, but I’m not joking around this time.” The girl let out another giggle before placing her hand on his shoulder and giving it a quick squeeze. 

“I think you look rather dashing yourself. Unfortunately, though, I have to get going. I’ll see you around?” 

“It would be my pleasure.” Draco watches Y/N’s figure as she walks away. Before she goes any further, she looks over her shoulder and says, “Good luck with the auction!” 

With a small wave and smile, the boy is left in a lighter state.

The gala came and went with Draco thoroughly exhausted from the copious amounts of socialization. Questions regarding connections to his father were asked, business cards were exchanged, and flattery and compliment was a common occurrence amongst these interactions. Nevertheless, the boy’s energy especially drained from the intensity of the auction that occurred towards the end of the night. All the art pieces were valuable and beautiful, however it was only then that he realized that he wasn’t the only one drawn to Y/N’s work. Competition for the highest bid was at an all-time high as number paddles were desperately raised for every price announced. His heart clambered in his chest as the thought of keeping the ceramics seemingly slipped from his grasp. 

“Highest bid for 80,000 galleons! Do we have any takers?” The auctioneer announces. Draco waits for a second to see that no one has raised their paddles. Within the next, he lifts his own confidently. 

“We have a bidder for 80,000 galleons! Do we have any more bidders? No?” At this point, adrenaline coursed through his veins, beads of sweat had formed and fell, and the grip on his paddle tightened, leaving marks on his hand.

The auctioneer proceeds to announce the final countdown, “Final bid for 80,000 galleons! 1, 2, 3, sold to Draco Malfoy!” Relief overcame him while congratulatory praises were given by those nearby. He catches Y/N’s gaze from afar, and throws her a wink, signifying the resolution for the chaotic night.

--

As attendees began to file out of the building, the boy waited in the hall to collect his reward, filling out the form that confirmed the amount he had to pay. With his attention drawn to the slip, he fails to notice Y/N’s presence beside him. She looks over his shoulder, eyes widening at the amount before looking away to suppress the smile that threatens to form on her lips. She never really gave much monetary value to her art before; each one was produced as a product of passion and love. However, the expression that it first brought to Draco’s face, in addition to the amount of effort he put in to attain them, reassures that her work will be well taken care of. She momentarily stares at his broad shoulders before gaining the courage to speak.

“Congratulations!” She says, startling him once again. He takes a second to collect his breath before looking up at her.

“Do you plan on giving me a heart attack, Y/L/N, or is it in your nature to be overly enthusiastic?” The shameless smirk she has on her face, prompts him to release a chuckle. He stands up straight as soon as he signs the piece of paper, engaging his line of vision with hers.

“The way you respond is not my fault, Malfoy.” She answers, playfully shoving her index finger towards his shoulder. He grabs her wrist, and the warmth from his hands, accompanied by the flirtatious gleam in his eyes, prompts her to cast the same expression. She shoots him a coy smile before he releases her from his grasp.

“Would you like to accompany me to the front?” He asks.

“That’d be lovely.” The pair approaches the stage where the volunteers greet them both. They present his items upon confirmation, and proceed to wrap each bowl individually. He lifts one of the unwrapped pieces to his eyes, examining the gold details.

“How’d you manage to pull this off?” He asks, impressed by her craftsmanship.

“It’s a technique called ‘kintsugi’. I learned it while living in Japan for a while after the war,” She says, reaching her hand out for it. He gives it to her.

“You know, these pieces were never supposed to be auctioned off in this gala,” She explains as she delicately traces the lines, “They were so damaged. You can even consider them to be broken beyond repair,” Draco observes as she lifts it to her eye level.

“But obviously, when pieced back together—with all their cracks emphasized by the gold—they have much more value and beauty,” Y/N gives it back to Draco, and he takes it gingerly.

“However, It took a long time for it to come out that way. When you examine the piece before its repair, the first thought in mind would be to discard it. After all, why would anyone bother mending a broken bowl?” She meets his eyes once again.

“These cracks would typically be considered flaws, but at the end of the process the piece is still whole—I’m still whole. They mean a lot to me, and helped me heal from the war and all.” Her line of sight drifts towards the end of her statement, yet the boy catches himself appalled by the passion in her voice. He didn’t expect her to speak so openly, yet the words that flowed from her mouth touch him in a way he can’t comprehend. For once he feels a glimmer of hope budding within. For once, inspiration meets him, and he doesn’t want to lose that feeling she effortlessly provided. 

“I’ll make sure to take great care of them.” He says with much sincerity.

He places the piece back onto the table, and turns back to Y/N to see a sweet smile on her lips.

“I have faith you will.” A knowing look is shared between them--one that makes both hearts flutter in longing to see each other again.

“Do you think we can keep in contact? If it’s alright with you that is. I’d like to become more familiar with this art technique.”

“The Slytherin prince wants to keep in contact with me? Consider me wooed.” Draco rolls his eyes and chuckles at the old title. Before he could respond, she speaks again with more seriousness, “I don’t usually accept visitors in my studio, but I’ll make an exception for you. You can come by sometime, if you’d like.” 

A genuine smile appears on his lips for the second time that night. Out of all the individuals he exchanged contacts with, she by far had been his favorite. He ensured to send her an owl to confirm their meeting, hoping to do so some time next week. 

As they part, she turns back one more time, and calls out to him, “Draco,” The sound of his name perks his head upward

“You should smile more. It’s a lovely sight.” Before he could see her face erupt in a blush, she apparates away. With his new belongings in hand and an obvious grin, he too returns to the manor, feeling elated for the first time in a long while.

--

It was nine o’clock by the time Draco apparated home. Narcissa immediately took notice of his change in aura much to her relief.

“How was the gala, dear?” She asks.

“Quite pleasant this time around, if I’m being honest. I won these at an auction.” Draco stated as he props the box on top of a table. His mother approaches him, attention drawn to the objects when he reveals the contents inside.

She gasps, “Oh my stars, they’re beautiful.”

She picks one up delicately. The expression she had on her face was very much identical to the one he sported when he came across them the first time.

“I knew you’d like them. The artist was a fellow classmate of mine at Hogwarts.”

“Oh? Who is it? I would like to see more from this artist.”

“Her name is Y/N Y/L/N. Quite brilliant she is.” Mother’s instinct told Narcissa that this girl had her son taken aback. She saw it through the pleasant expression that graced his facial features, which contrasted greatly to the gloomy air that usually accompanied him. Furthermore, there was a decadent tone in his voice, a sparkle in his eyes, and a slight smile present when her name rolled off his tongue. She decided to probe a little bit more.

“House?”

“Ravenclaw.” He responds.

“Very fitting. The craftsmanship in her work is amazing,” The woman’s eyes marveled at the gold.

“How is she?” She asks. The question catches the boy off guard.

“Pardon?”

“How is she doing? Has she been okay since the war?”

“We didn’t touch upon it too much. Although, she mentioned that creating these has helped her heal.” 

“You mean to say that these were broken at one point?” 

“Precisely. She mended them.” At this point, Narcissa was quite taken by the girl as well. 

“You should invite her over one of these days. I’d love to have a cup of tea with her.” Draco quirked a brow at her.

“You’re not going to ask about her blood status?” 

“I would’ve known she was a pureblood from her last name, but times are changing aren’t they not?” Narcissa flashes a tightlipped smile towards her son, to which he responds with a nod of understanding.

“I’ll be going up then. You can keep that one mother. You seem to take a liking to it.” Draco turns on his heel at the end of his statement, carrying the box of ceramic goods under his arm. He wouldn’t acknowledge that times are changing. However, tonight has been the only instance he had felt his life shifting  —from the way he reunited with Y/N, to the way his mother spoke. It was a step forward to redemption, and he felt a little more willing to see where it would go.

The boy sat on his bed, deep in thought. With moonlight shining upon him, he delicately traced the golden lines that streaked the small bowl in his hands. Then with much hesitation, he rolled up his left sleeve and began tracing the blaring curves of the mark that stained his porcelain skin. Its presence resembled shackles that have been chained to his ankles, and the weight of the memories caused him to grimace. However the budding warmth that had seeped within him soothed the negative sensations. Heart palpitations of regret transformed into those of hope. Furthermore, recollection of the girl’s words rang through his mind. It led him to wonder if piecing himself into something better would ever be a viable reality—a dream so tempting to pursue that he brought himself to his desk to start a letter addressed to her.

--

Y/N awoke to a tapping noise on her window. With heavy-lidded eyes, she peeks through her curtains only to be met by an eagle owl. Its wide orbs stared directly at her, and attached to its beak was an envelope. She recalled the conversation she had with a certain platinum-haired boy from the night before, and immediately jolted upward, pushing the window open to let the animal in.

“Do you belong to Draco, love?” It perches itself on her shoulder, and drops the envelope into her hands. A wax seal presents itself with an ‘M’, confirming her inquiry. She opens it with much carefulness, and pulls out the letter inside.

Y/L/N,

How does this Thursday sound? 5:00?

DM

The girl chuckled at how straight-to-the-point he was, while her mind flitted back to their school days. She had always felt neutral about him. In contrast to popular belief, she didn’t think he was quite bad. Despite the harshness behind his actions, his eyes always maintained an undertone of fear. Upon the revelation that the boy was indeed a death eater, the title itself wasn’t what stirred her. Rather, it was the incomprehensible experience that she could merely picture him going through. She was there when he crossed sides. She was no stranger to the distraught look on his face--fear had overtaken him even in that moment. He might’ve been flawed, but it wasn’t without reason.

A cry from the owl broke her out of thought. “Impatient are we?” It blinked in response. Not wanting to keep the bird waiting any longer, she pulls out a piece of parchment and begins to write a response to the letter. 

Y/N inserted the parchment into an envelope, sealed it, and handed it to the owl only after she gave it a treat. As she watched it take flight from her window sill, she contemplated more on the boy. ‘Kintsugi’ the art of broken pieces and precious scars. As thoughts of him lingered, she began to wonder if how he fared ever since the war had drawn to its close. Before she knew it, she carried along with her work, totally occupied with the image of him in mind.

--

Draco’s heart beat like a drum when he skimmed through the contents of Y/N’s response. The feeling of nervous excitement erupted within his stomach up until the moment he stood on her doorstep. Besides the instances in which he’d gone out for his parents, it had been a long while since he stepped foot outside for himself. He took sight of the sheet of clouds that blanketed the sky, the small plants that were scattered on her porch, and the movement of the curtain as wind blew through her open window. 

Mere seconds of waiting were filled with more self-doubt as he tugged on his left sleeve, clenching his forearm soon after. Not much could be guaranteed from this meeting. For all he knew, this might’ve been a one a time thing. However, such thoughts were casted aside once he was greeted with Y/N’s glowing smile.

“Draco! It’s so nice to see you!” She stepped aside to let him in, “Please come in.”

The boy greets her, and looks around her small space. He indulges in the glimpse of her expressive decor--somehow they represented the life that she had built and created for herself over time. 

“Darling, your jaw is going to fall off,” she chuckled, “Come, the studio is in the back.” The girl gestures at him to follow her, and is met with a small building stationed behind the main house. The image of shelves fills his view upon entering. On them were stacks of cracked ceramic—some in large pieces, others in small. Towards the far corner of the room was a pottery wheel, and opposite from it was a small gas kiln. In the middle was a table space with various tools, brushes, lacquer, and gold. The room was as neat as it could be, much to Draco’s surprise.

“This is me.” Y/N turns around with her arms spread out. She then proceeds to pull a stool out for the boy and urges him to sit. He does so, and she stands in close proximity to him, leaning on the table for support.

“I was actually working on a piece before you came.” The girl points to her current project—a vase whose cracks have already been bound.

“What’s the process like?” He asks

“It’s much longer than you think. I learned how to do it the traditional way in Japan, and I haven’t deviated from it ever since.” The boy quirks a brow.

“You mean to say that there are faster methods?”

“There are, however it’s the process I appreciate the most I suppose. Mending takes time after all.” Y/N, who had been looking down at her feet, glances up at him to see his brows furrowed inwardly. 

“Don’t you get impatient?” She nods in reminiscence.

“I used to in the past, but all things worth anything take time, right?” They stare at each other for a moment. Draco, who has longed for the feeling of redemption, looked into the pure intent within her eyes. The silence prompts her to slip a small smile at him. 

“How about you, Draco Malfoy? How have you been?” There it was: The question that he could never answer (not truthfully anyway). Despite being in the center of all his thoughts, he hadn’t developed the courage to face them properly. He was stuck in a routine of living that provided a false sense of security. However, the present brought him to the realization that he had never been secure--not with himself.

“Not as good as what people see at face value.” He said simply.

“I never would’ve thought. Although, I suppose it just shows that we can never truly judge others, huh?”

“Yes, definitely.” He allowed his view on her to linger before speaking again.

“I actually wanted to see the way you worked.” It was her turn to quirk a brow at him.

“And why’s that?”

“To see the mending process.” Y/N remained silent as she analyzed the longing look in his eyes. His silvery orbs conveyed volumes of a history that was left unspoken. 

He continued, “I want to believe that broken things can be mended.” The determination in his eyes reminded her of why she began learning kintsugi in the first place. Behind the determination was hope that longed to be born to fruition. 

“I have one condition,” she said. His eyebrows arched in response.

“You can watch me, but you have to do some mending yourself.” She stepped away at the end of her statement and reached for something on her shelves. When she came back, she grabbed the boy’s hand, and placed a small bowl in his palm. It was a simple piece--still intact--taking on a warm, grey sheen. He looked at her with confusion, only to be met with seriousness. 

“Kintsugi begins when something breaks, and it focuses more on the beauty of the process rather than the outcome. That being said, it requires a lot of patience and acceptance.”

“I’m not an artist, Y/N. It won’t be perfect.” The girl takes hold of his other hand, and cups it within hers firmly. 

“It doesn’t have to be, Draco. The process belongs to you. You just have to trust yourself.” She said earnestly with her grip on him tightening. The warmth from her hands emanated through his skin and into his chest. She stood so close now, her head tilted upward to meet the uncertainty on his face. It made him feel vulnerable, but he stared back into her eyes with much resolve. It was an answer as it is.

Y/N gave him a reassuring smile and stepped away from him.

“I want you to drop that bowl. You don’t have to smash it, just let it fall.” Draco shifted his glance and looked at the bowl hesitantly. After a couple of seconds, he releases his hold, and allows the piece to slip from his fingers. His eyes were trained on it as it fell through the air, meeting its fate with a shattering sound. The bowl that was once intact was now in pieces on the floor, eliciting a familiar ache within him. It had split into five--a large one, one medium, and three more that were much smaller that comprised the object's rim.

As he bent down to pick up the pieces, a new wave of ambition overcame him. Each chip was picked up with much mindfulness, with responsibility, with purpose. When he stood up again, he began to perceive them as a reflection of himself, and gently placed them on the workbench.

Y/N, who witnessed the entire scene, smiled when Draco turned to face her. Her lips were pulled up gently, sweetly, and it evoked rosy feelings inside him. The boy eyed her as she went back to the shelf.

“How do you feel?” She asked. Her back was turned to him as she reached for another bowl. 

“Light.” She smiled at the sound of his response. She returned with a teal-colored bowl in hand. Following his previous actions, she dropped it, allowing the sounds of shatters to fill their ears once more.

“What are you doing?” He asks. 

“You think I’m going to make you do this alone?” The girl bends down as she gingerly picks up the chips of ceramic from the floor. She proceeds to clear out the table, leaving only the utensils to be used to start the process. 

“The materials I use are already here, but we’ll be working only with the lacquer for today.” The two set off to organize their pieces, hearts becoming more aware of one another as time passes on. After everything got sorted out, she demonstrated layering a coat of lacquer to the edges. Draco examined the way the smile instantly left her face, only to be replaced with a focused expression. Her eyebrows lowered, lips in a firm line, sights fixed on the ceramic. He also noticed how languid her fingers were in handling each piece with care. 

The solemnity of the sight is broken as she parts her lips to speak again, “Did you know that the lacquer is toxic?” He shakes his head when she spares him a glance momentarily before setting her gaze back onto the chips. “It’s toxic when wet, therefore much care needs to be taken when you lay it on the edges.” She then takes the smaller pieces and proceeds to add lacquer on them as well.

“However,” She continues, “as it dries, it hardens and mends the bowl perfectly.” She attaches the pieces together, and lifts the bowl carefully to show him. The boy stares at her flawless handiwork--the cracks reveal themselves as mere lines, seemingly invisible to the naked eye. 

“Strange, right? A substance that was once toxic is used to mend. When it dries it restores the product to perfection, and loses its toxicity.” Draco simply nods. It was a hard concept for the boy to grasp, but her words tickled a corner of his heart. How could something so bad be used to restore something that was once whole into perfection? He gazes at his own project while Y/N sets hers down carefully.

She passes the materials to him, observing as he gingerly takes the brush in hand. He dips it into the pool of lacquer, raising a glob of it up from the bottle.

“You don’t need too much, just enough so that the brush is covered completely.” She reached out to grab his hand, to demonstrate what she had meant. After realizing their closeness, however, she turned a shade of pink and stepped back. Draco tried his best to hold back his smile, but failed miserably.

“I’m s-sorry.” She stammered. He chuckled at her. 

“Nonsense, I’m all for this form of instruction.” He said teasingly, eliciting a laugh from her.

“Don’t mind me, just concentrate.” She ordered. Silence loomed, but smiles remained on their faces. Draco continued his work, emulating the way she coated her edges. He gripped each chip firmly while his eyes trailed the movement of the brush. Each second spent felt like darkness was being extracted from within, leaving him light and solemn. With much caution, he then pressed them together, and watched as the product adopted its once flawless form. With an approving look, Y/N explained the proceeding steps, immediately noticing the relaxed expression that had settled on his features. Deciding to take a break, the two embark to the main house to relax.

“Since we have to wait a while, is there anything you want to do? To eat?” She asked as they entered the room. The question, however, was left unanswered due to the sighting of a familiar looking uniform. Hung on her wall was a Ravenclaw robe.  

“You still have it?” He asked, pointing to the article of clothing with his chin. She chuckled and pulled it off it’s hanger.

“Yeah. I found it a couple days ago, and thought I’d try it for old times sake.” She slipped it over her shoulders, pulling the boy through a series of flashbacks from his time in Hogwarts. He recalled passing her by the hallways, getting small glimpses of her sketches, even seeing her vibrant personality shine with her friends.

“You know, I always thought you looked better in green.” He said approaching her.

“You think so?” He nodded.

“It’s a shame that we never really talked much. I think we would’ve been good friends.” She said in response.

“You think so?” 

“Well besides the bullying, yes. I don’t think you’re as bad as people portray you to be.” 

“You give me too much credit, Y/L/N.”

“Maybe you deserve a little more credit than you were granted.” This sparked more warmth within the boy. As she ordered food for delivery, Draco took a seat at her table, his gaze locked on her with the robe still propped on her body. His thoughts drifted as he imagined what might’ve happened if he did befriend the girl. How different would he be if he had her for company? How close would he have allowed their friendship to become? His mind began to wander and he ruminated on the what-could-have-beens, most especially the effect that his receiving of the dark mark would have had on her. His fingers flitted to his arm and rubbed the portion of fabric that covered his mark.

Y/N sat across from the boy, immediately noticing his dazed look.

“What’s on your mind?” She inquires. The boy broke off from his thoughts and refocused his attention to her.

“Just thinking about the past.”

“What of it?” She asked. He looked at her with slight reservation in his eyes.

“How different things would be if we were friends.” Her thoughts lingered on the possibilities for a while before she abandoned them completely. Only one realization came into mind:

“Well, we’re friends now. Perhaps everything that happened in the past was needed for us to meet like this.” She slid off her robe and propped it back on the hanger. 

She continued, “Whatever it is, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Now belongs to us.” 

In that moment, a switch flipped in Draco’s mind, and he knew those words would stick to him for a long time. Maybe it wasn’t a chance at redemption that he yearned for--the conversation he had with her made him realize that the chance had always been presented to him--rather it was company. Genuine company. The one that opened their arms for comfort, the one that offered understanding when he couldn’t offer some to himself, the one that provided reassurance that everything was going to be okay. 

She didn’t need to elaborate. Her words conveyed her intent clearly, her eyes blazed with firmness, confidence, and faith in him. The boy closed himself off for way too long out of the fear that he’d be rejected once again. The anxieties that had resulted from the foul glances, derogatory statements, and prematurely formed accusations towards his family locked him away to the only source of comfort that was available to him--himself. How was it possible that he made it through on his own all this time? He barely held on to a thread, and as he crumbled further, so did his grip. And when the grip was no more, he fell into the hollowed body that he was. He allowed his darkness to swallow him, to control him as he mindlessly drifted with each passing day. 

Until now.

Right now, in the stillness of the room, in the comfort of her dining table, in the presence of her worn out Ravenclaw robe, the thread had reconstructed itself. It presented itself as the small smile that softly graced her lips, the scent of clay that lingered on her hands, and his bowl that sat solemnly streaked with cracks in the workshop behind the main house. 

“I suppose you’re right.” The boy showed a smile of relief, which prompted the girl to reach out for his hand, giving it a firm squeeze.

“Here’s to our friendship!”

--

There were very few things that Draco cherished in his life: his family and his solitude. As weeks flew by with Y/N’s company, however, he found that his heart was beginning to create space for her as well. It began subtly with the way he silently observed her actions. She catered to each of her pieces with the same amount of dedication--every detail incorporated with mindfulness, with care, and intention. She exerted a similar effort when it came to guiding him. Every step in the process was taught with much patience. Her soft hands would graze his own in attempts to correct his form, to stabilize his shakiness, and to relieve him of the tension that came with his perfectionistic tendencies.

-flashback-

The sound of Draco’s uneven breaths made themselves aware in Y/N’s presence. She had left him alone to tend to his project and herself to her own. Muscle memory led her to scrape off the excess traces of lacquer from the cracks, while the boy fixed his concentration on sanding the surface of his bowl smooth. Scratching noises filled the air, and only became more amplified as minutes ticked onward. It was unfamiliar to the girl--the action itself shouldn’t have required much energy. With a brow arched upward, and her gaze directed towards him, the sight of furrowed brows and tense lines fill her view, eliciting a chuckle from her.

“You’re going to break the bowl at that rate, Draco.” The boy unclenched his jaw and gave Y/N an exasperated look, increasing the volume of her laughter.

“I told you I won’t be perfect.” 

“What is it that you’re having trouble with?” Y/N asked, as she made her way to his side of the table.

“Some of the excess just won’t budge from its place.” Draco huffed in frustration. She removed the bowl from his grasp, and examined the object. On the other hand, he takes the liberty to step closer to her, his face peering over her shoulder. The heat emanating from his body distracted her, which she responded to by immediately returning her attention to the remnants that resided on its cracks.

“It helps to focus on one spot at a time,” She grabs the crumpled piece of sandpaper laying on the side, and connects its surface to the porcelain. He watches as she uses minimal yet focused motions to scrub at the excess. Slowly but surely the residue clears out, revealing a clean, crisp line. “See?” She turns her head to the side only to be met with his in such close proximity. His breath softly brushes against her skin. His silvery orbs dive deep into her y/e/c ones. The pulses of their heartbeats ring through their ears, and the concentration shifts from the demonstration to one another. 

It’s the apparent flush staining his skin that has her pulling away. 

“Why don’t you try?” She nervously asks. Y/N hands the bowl to the boy, and observes as he attempts to emulate her actions. With motions still stiff and choppy, she finally takes his hand into hers.

“Relax, Draco. You need to be patient with it.” With slender fingers wrapped around the back of his palm, she guides his grip with focused and particular motions. The repetition engrains itself into his muscle memory, and he quickly gets the hang of it. He exhibits relief with every remnant removed. In return, she releases her grip and looks at him with a satisfied expression.

“Thank you.” He says, and he means it. With perfection constantly being expected of him, the feeling of humility that comes with being a beginner is foreign. He had always been pushed into the limelight--the weight of his family name designates the image of flawlessness, elegance, and poise in all that he did. No room for mistakes. He was required of only the best. So, when he looks at her and gazes at his hands, a genuine smile spreads on his lips. 

The expectation for perfection may have taunted his past, but the realization of his commitment in giving his best brought out a clear sense of victory despite the imperfect process that had been associated with it.

--

Some days are tougher than others. The nightmares make it difficult to get through the night regardless of how infrequent they became. It always resulted in him waking up, broken into a cold sweat. Goosebumps peppered his skin, the hair behind his neck stood straight, and he would gasp for air. With regret once again overcoming him, a weight forms in his throat--it’s impossible to go to sleep now. Moreover, the fear for the lack of a peaceful slumber keeps him wide awake until sunrise, and there is only one word that shouts at him in the back of his mind.

“Mudblood.”

“Mudblood.”

“You filthy mudblood!”

The sayings are coupled with the memory of his back pressed onto the cold, wet, bathroom floor. He could recall the stinging sensations that pricked his body, the sight of blood seeping through the white fabric of his uniform, and the energy that was draining from his spirit. It was the lowest he has ever been--mere moments away from what could’ve been his end. Maybe that’s what should’ve happened. There was no one for him to turn to--the warmth of his mother’s arms was so far away, the act of shedding tears was sacrificed to protect his family, and the fact that he was already repulsive in the eyes of others caused his hope to plummet. There wasn’t anyone who he could call his true friend--one he could confide in to relieve the burdens he had faced.

But there was Y/N. The erratic heartbeats that rang against his chest subside when he remembered the firmness within her voice as she cheered for their friendship. The sparkle and reassurance that was displayed within her eyes tickled his heart in a way that he hadn’t experienced before. The soft touch of her hands reminded him that he wasn’t alone. The patience in her voice reminded him that despite all of his shortcomings, there was always hope for change. 

It was then that he’d pluck himself out of bed, and take hold of the ceramic piece that laid prettily on his desk. With deep breaths, he ran his fingers through its golden streaks, allowing the chilled sensation to calm him down. His eyelids would flutter close, and he’d envision her soft smiles, her chipper personality, and the passion that was expressed through her eyes whenever she worked. He’d recall the worn-out Ravenclaw robe hanging on the wall of her dining room, and remember that she was there. She believed in him. She had given him a chance. With his mind set to ease and the morning sun illuminating through the fabric of his curtains, Draco picked up his own broken pieces, and binded himself with the faith she had as the lacquer to keep him together. 

Narcissa and Lucius had noticed subtle changes in the boy. A peaceful light had returned to his silvery eyes, the frown that graced his lips began to fade with time, and the tension that he held in his joints loosened. He treaded the halls with his back upright, his vision trained straight ahead--each step filled with more purpose than the last. They didn’t make it known to him, but the sight brought them much joy.

--

It was a cloudy day when Draco returned to Y/N’s workshop. This time around, however, there’s much more uncertainty and nervousness within him as he stands in the midst of her working. 

Earlier that morning, Narcissa mentioned hosting a ball within the manor (something that hasn’t been done in forever). Invitations were sent out already, the RSVP list continues to grow, and the property itself has been decorated to exhibit its new grandeur. Of course, he agreed to it--slightly concerned about how they’d be perceived--but he was more thrown off by his mother’s only request:

“Please bring Y/N with you, Draco. I’d like to commission her for a piece.” In his mind that translated into, “I want to meet the girl you’ve been constantly visiting.” He knew his mother wasn’t against her. He was more worried about how Y/N, herself, would respond.

The familiarity of her focused expression surfaces, and it attracts him much more than it has before. Her hands are nimble, and she moves fluently. Her hair was tied into a low and messy bun with loose strands framing her face. Her appearance now was much different than their first meeting at the gala, yet his mind went back to that night--picturing her beauty in her deep emerald green dress. With his feelings for her more clarified, he feels his heart beat at the thought of her touch, moreover the thought of his touch on her. Would she even return his feelings? 

“Draco, are you alright? You’ve been staring this way for a while now.” He takes the opportunity to test the waters.

“I needed to ask you something actually.” He goes around and pulls a stool to sit on, meeting the level of her gaze.

“And that is?”

“My mother asked for you,” He said, fumbling with his fingers, “My family is hosting a ball, and she wants you to come--she wants to meet you.” He notices the way her eyes widen at the sound of his announcement. 

“I’m sorry. Come again?” Draco released a soft chuckle before reaching into his pocket. He pulls out a decorated envelope with her name printed on the front.

“This is yours.” She takes it from his grasp gingerly and brushes her fingers on the fine embellishments. Realization hits her when she skims across the familiar letters of her name.

“I’ve imagined many things in my life, but they certainly don’t come close to this. Wow, imagine being invited to a Malfoy ball.” Her words flowed out with awe, softening his heart. He reaches out, and tucks one of the loose strands behind her ear. The action forces her to look into his eyes.

“She’s taken quite a liking to your work.” His smile brings out one of her own.

“I’m honored.” She starts to beam, “I should go dress shopping soon.” Her eyes remain transfixed on the information given on the actual invite itself.

“I think you’d look beautiful in anything you decide to wear.” It was meant to be a thought--meant to stay in his head--but it came out, and now the girl felt her face get hot. She covered it with her hands, while the boy just looked up at the ceiling to avoid her gaze.

“You weren’t supposed to hear that.” He says.

“It’s fine.” 

“If it’s fine then why are your hands still covering your face?”

“Why are you still looking up?” Draco, lowers his chin and pulls her wrists away.

“I’m not anymore.” When the words leave his lips, and his eyes meet hers, he becomes aware of the amount of peace that he attained since meeting her again. In some way, the silence that fills them is overtaken by the messages that their gazes send to one another, both containing gratitude and affection. 

“So will you come with me?” He asks.

“Definitely.”

--

 Y/N paced back and forth while many aristocrats stepped into the manor with much poise in their step. She didn’t mind formal events when it came to art, however, this case felt entirely foreign to her realm of comfort. She wasn’t from a wealthy family nor was she pureblooded either. Surely the end of the war had initiated a shift in change, but the significance of blood status still persisted in some even after. Nevertheless, she made herself present. With much resolve and a false sense of confidence, she stepped into the entrance of the building.

The foyer was bustling with chatter--many attendees stood with glasses of champagne in hand. Still in an awkward stature, the girl takes a look around. The ceilings were decorated with crystal chandeliers. Velvet curtains were pulled to the side, exposing massive windows. Arches, columns, even the walls were covered with ornamental carvings. Every single aspect portrayed luxury. Whenever Draco visited the girl, she discarded his association to wealth and solely focused on him as a person. Because of this, the realization that the boy actually had some coin in his pockets hit her like bricks. 

Draco, who had kept his eyes locked on the girl, chuckled to himself. She stuck out from the crowd with her eyes widened in awe. Not to mention her attire. Her hair was kept straight down with golden clips holding it tucked behind her ear. Furthermore, she was dressed in a champagne mermaid gown speckled with beads and embroidery, which flourished outwards and into a sheer fabric decorated with similar details. Her neckline plunged into the middle of her abdomen, yet her shoulders remained covered with long sleeves that wrapped themselves fittingly around her wrists. She truly had the tastes of an artist.

He quietly made his way to her as she continued to gawk at the room. “Your jaw is going to drop, darling.” He whispered in her ear. The feeling of large hands planting themselves on her waist caused her to let out a small yelp, pulling her out of her daze. She let out a breath of relief when she turned to see Draco’s face. 

“You scared me.”

“You were gawking at the walls.” Y/N rolled her eyes, and briefly skimmed him from head to toe. Heart skipping at the way his suit had admiringly framed his shape well. She giggled at the sight of the snake brooch that embellished the collar of his jacket.

“Always a Slytherin, aren’t you Malfoy?” As she brushed her fingers along the details of its design, Draco reached for her hand, and held it by her fingers. She could only stare as he lifted it higher to press his lips on it. Butterflies were felt everywhere.

“And a charmer.” She added. They shared a quick laugh before being interrupted by the sound of someone clearing their throat. Standing before them was Narcissa, who beamed at the sight of her son with the girl beside him.

“You must be Y/N Y/L/N. I admire your work, dear.” The older woman stuck her hand out, which the girl shook firmly.

“Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to meet you Mrs. Malfoy.”

“Please, call me Narcissa.” The delight in her voice emitted a welcoming energy, loosening the nerves that Y/N felt early on.

“Thank you so much for inviting me, Narcissa.” 

“It was no problem at all, dear. I’d actually like to speak to you regarding a commission later on tonight. Would that be alright with you?”

“Of course! I’m honored you’d even considered me.”

“Very well, I’ll leave you two alone now. I hope you enjoy yourselves.” Sweet smiles and gazes were exchanged between the two women. After casting a knowing look to her son, she departs from the pair, disappearing into the crowd. 

“Draco, I’ll have you know that I can’t dance to save my life.” He snickered at her confession, already letting the comfort between them settle in.

“It’s alright. Let’s walk instead.” With arms hooked, Draco begins leading her away from the bustling room and into a secluded hall. Mounted on the walls were paintings of his predecessors. He introduced each patriarchal figure to her, starting with Septimus. Her vision plastered itself to their features, mentally discerning the traits that Draco inherited. After a while of walking and conversation, they finally got to a family portrait. Depicted on it was a younger-looking Lucius and Narcissa, and seated on his mother’s lap was a young Draco himself. Y/N unhooked her arm from his, and approached the painting. She concentrated on the little boy. He had bright eyes, a toothy grin, and flowing platinum locks. His hand gripped firmly on Narcissa’s, and his small legs dangled over her dress. He was the only one smiling in the painting, and it warmed your heart knowing that the artist decided to keep that detail in.

“What’s going on in that mind of yours?” He asks, stepping close. He hesitantly snaked his arm around her waist, hoping that she didn’t mind. She looked up to him and smiled, stepping even closer to him. 

“You were so small.” Draco scowled slightly. However, his heart skipped a beat when he saw the way she looked at the portrait with adoration, allowing his foul expression to fade.

“Well that was painted when I was seven, so it’s no wonder I was small.” His sarcastic remark caused her to roll her eyes again, softly slapping the hand that was planted on her. He glanced at her and squeezed her side tighter, pulling Y/N even closer to his body--his warmth increasing the amount of butterflies that rose in her stomach.

“When I walked in earlier, it completely slipped my mind that this was your house. That you grew up here.”

“Why’s that?” He asks, genuinely interested in her response.

“Everytime you came over, I only saw you as Draco. Not as Draco Malfoy, only son of Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy, and heir to the Malfoy family name.” 

“Please elaborate.” He commands, his heart now racing.

“You’re more than the expectations held for you. You came with commitment to learn about a process that you were genuinely interested in. You grew with your mistakes and your frustrations. That experience was you, and you alone.” She couldn’t help but reveal that admiration she had for him through her voice. 

“I thought it was amazing.” She whispered, hoping that he wouldn’t hear her. He did, however. In turn, he grabbed her hand and led her further down the hallway and into his room. Y/N stood there confused at his sudden action. Her eyes then begin to widen at the sight of him removing his suit jacket with her mind drifting to rather dirty thoughts. 

“Draco, what are you-” 

“I didn’t think it was possible.” Y/N furrowed her brows.

“What do you mean?” Draco looked into her eyes, before shifting his gaze to his left sleeve. Her line of sight follows him as he unbuttons his cuff, and rolls the fabric up, revealing his dark mark. She gasps.

“I didn’t think it was possible to mend myself.” It didn’t take him to say much for her to finally understand that he didn’t intend to do anything dirty. It was the opposite of that. He was making himself vulnerable to her.

“But you showed me how.” He said, completing his statement. Tears brimmed her eyes upon the realization of the reality he had to live. The blaring mark that took away his innocence screamed against his pale skin. It screamed of the pain, of loneliness, and the many many long sleeved shirts he must’ve worn to keep it hidden away. 

“If there’s anyone amazing, it’s you, Y/N.” The tears that had built up fell as she furiously shook her head.

“No, Draco. It’s you. It’s all you.” She took his arm delicately into her hands and pressed her lips on his dark mark. Draco felt his eyes well up in tears, while her own spilled onto his skin. Every kiss that she peppered seemed to paint over his scars, his cracks with gold. The feeling of emptiness dissipated in her presence, only surrounding him with warmth that he had yearned to keep.

“I’m thankful for you.” He whispers. Y/N couldn’t hold herself back at that point anymore. She released his arm from her grip, and held his cheeks within her fingertips, wiping the moisture that managed to fall from his silvery orbs. She, then, slowly lifts herself using her tiptoes, and scans his face for a moment before pressing a sweet, short kiss on his lips. It was gentle, much like her. It was patient, much like her. It was filled with faith, hope, and concern--things that she hadn’t been able to express to him in words, yet was felt through her kiss. Draco closed his eyes at the sensation. When she parted from him, he cupped her face with his hands, and drew her close once more. A sigh escaped her as she felt all the emotions he managed to keep in. Each press conveyed a level of appreciation that the boy had never thought he was capable of showing. 

In that moment a memory of a shrill shout fills her mind, and she stops so suddenly.

“Weren’t you struck with sectumsempra?” She asks with her brows furrowed towards him. His lack of response confirms her curiosity. 

“May I?” Her fingers trail to the top of his shirt as she makes her request. Knowing what it is she wants to see, he nods, prompting her to carefully undo the buttons. Her hands tremble as she makes her way down, revealing the scars that resided on his body. She pushes the fabric over his shoulders, and begins tracing each one--much similar to the way he has done with the golden cracks on her bowl. She slowly lowers herself and starts placing kisses where he has been struck. With her hands gently fastened to his sides, her lips linger in one area before transferring to another. He finds comfort in them--it was as if each sensation reassured that he was loved. As she travels upward, she plants a kiss on his jaw, and a final one on his own. With it she expresses a message dedicated only to him: I believe in you.

They separate and bask in the moment by holding each other’s gaze. After a while, Draco wraps his arms around her waist, and pulls her into a tight embrace. He nuzzles his nose on the crook of her neck and kisses it, while she runs her hands up and down his bare sides. His left hand then finds its way to her jaw, tilting her face upwards. He proceeds to nip the expanse of her neck, making her head fall back to grant him more access. The hand that was wrapped around her waist travels downwards to her hip, grips it, and presses her body against his. 

“Draco,” she moans.

“Hm?” She doesn’t respond. She finds herself completely intoxicated by his lips as he moves from her neck, her sternum, and to her exposed abdomen. Instead, she laced her fingers into his hair and pushed him closer to her skin. 

The pair was interrupted by the sound of a knock on the door. 

“Young master! Are you in there?” It was a houself. Draco presses a finger to his lips, signalling to remain quiet.

“I don’t think he’s there, we should check elsewhere.” Light footsteps were heard fading into the distance, eliciting a light laugh between the two. Y/N looks into his eyes once more, and kisses him one last time.

“Should we go?” He responds with a small ‘yes’ and kisses her forehead. As he buttons his shirt, the girl plods across his room, fascinated with its luxuriousness as she takes in the details. One of them causes her to gasp, however. She walks with her throat choking up at sight of the familiar bowl that was placed on his desk. It was hers. She lifts it gently, recalling their first conversation at the gala. The golden scars remind her heavily of the boy behind her. As she traces them, warm hands rub against her sides before snaking around her waist once more. 

“Does this mean you’re my girlfriend now?” Y/N laughs at his question.

“I suppose it does.” She says as she weaves her fingers into his. The boy takes a moment to stare at the bowl ahead.

“When you said that Kintsugi helped you heal, I wasn’t quite sure to believe you or not. But, going through the process was more than enough to make me understand why.”

“You truly are amazing Draco Malfoy. I won’t let anyone tell me you aren’t.”

“Even if my past is completely flawed?”

“Your past made you into who you are right now. What we have is ‘now’, and ‘now’,” she sets the bowl down and faces him, while her hand caresses his cheek. “...‘now’ belongs to us. Now you are amazingly, wonderfully, imperfectly perfect.”

Epilogue:

The sound of Y/N’s words rung in his mind as Draco found himself standing in the middle of her workspace. With a firm grasp on the brush handle, he dips the bristles into the gold liquid, allowing the excess to drip back.

He takes a deep breath, and allows the solemnity of the room to fill him. Many thoughts overtake him in the moment, but only one makes itself prominent to him, resilience. After going through the binding process himself, he pridefully lays down the gold over the cracks on his bowl--each one portraying the imperfections of his past.

A/N: Hi! If you made it this far, I want to thank you so much for reading! There’s a bit of inaccuracy in the last bit, but besides that I hope I brought much light to the technique in general. I hope you enjoyed!! Feedback is very much appreciated :D

Tagging:

@beiahadid @hahee154hq @mushi98 @stretchyice @dracosathenaeum @dreaming-about-fanfictions @saby06143 @rottenhexrt @littlethie @amithatemo

Link to the taglist is on my masterlist :D

[yesazea]

What’s the Best Codependency Treatment?

Codependency is usually mentioned as “relationship addiction.” It’s an emotional and behavioral condition that interferes with an individual’s ability to develop a healthy, mutually satisfying relationship.

The term codependency was first wont to describe the partner of somebody with an addiction—whose unhealthy choices enable or encourage the addiction to continue. But over the years it’s been expanded to incorporate individuals who maintain one-sided, emotionally destructive or abusive relationships and people relationships don’t necessarily need to be romantic.

Examples of Codependency

Codependent individuals have good intentions. they need to worry for a loved one who is struggling. But their efforts become compulsive and unhealthy.

Their attempts to rescue, save, and support their beloved allows the opposite individual to become even more hooked into them. The act of giving often gives a codependent individual a way of satisfaction as long as they gain recognition. They wish to “be needed.”

Their choices often backfire, however. they could feel trapped and grow resentful. they'll feel helpless yet unable to interrupt faraway from the connection or change their interactions.

The relationship tends to deteriorate over time. It's often riddled with anxiety, frustration, and pity, instead of love and luxury.

For some individuals, codependent relationships become commonplace. They hunt down friendships or romantic relationships where they're encouraged to act like martyrs.

Consequently, they devote all their time to caring for others and completely lose sight of what is important to them.

Codependency can are available in many forms. But at the basis of a codependent relationship is that the codependent individual loses sight of their own needs and needs to the detriment of themselves and therefore the other individual.

Here are some samples of what a codependent relationship might look like:

Codependency in Parent-Child Relationships

Example 1:

A parent constantly cleans up after an adult child who has moved back to the house. The parent gives the kid money and manages the child’s day-to-day affairs. They never mention why the adult child doesn’t have employment or how the cash is being spent because the parent doesn’t want to offend the kid. Giving them money and caring for them gives the parent a way of meaning and purpose.

Example 2: A parent is raising a toddler who is visually impaired. The parent insists on doing everything for the kid, albeit there are things the kid could learn to try to for themselves. the kid stays almost completely hooked into the parent for everything. The parent refuses any extra support services because they’re convinced they’re the sole one who can really assist their child.

Example 3: An adult child always drops everything the instant her mother calls to mention she’s having a nasty day. She considers it her job to require care of her mother as she knows her mother features a history of depression. She feels as if she’s the sole one who knows the way to help her mother feel better. She rarely leaves town because she never knows when her mother might need her. Her insistence that she has got to help her mother features a negative impact on her marriage.

Codependency in Romantic Relationships

Example 1:

a lady invests tons of energy into caring for her partner with a drinking problem. When he’s too hungover to travel to figure, she calls in sick for him. She then often calls in sick for herself so she will stay home and look out for him. She rarely engages in any social activities because she’s never sure when he could be drinking. And she’s afraid that if she’s not there, he might prefer to drive to the shop to shop for more alcohol. She makes excuses to friends and family about his behavior and never confronts him about his drinking for fear he’ll get angry and defensive. She schedules her life around him.

Example 2: A man’s partner features a chronic illness. She has mobility impairments and her physician has advised her to follow a particular diet. the person feels pitying her because she says she doesn’t enjoy the food on the diet plan. So he delivers her food that doctors say isn’t good for her and discourages her from doing any activity because she says traveling hurts. He makes it his life’s mission to worry about her needs.

Why It Happens

Codependency is learned by watching and imitating other relations who display this sort of behavior. It’s often passed down from one generation to subsequent. So a toddler who grew up watching a parent during a codependent relationship may repeat the pattern.

Codependency occurs in dysfunctional families where members often experience anger, pain, fear, or shame that's denied or ignored. Underlying issues that contribute to the dysfunction may involve:

- Addiction to drugs, alcohol, work, food, sex, gambling, relationships - Abuse (physical, emotional, or sexual) - Chronic physical illness or mental disease

Problems within the family are never confronted. Codependent individuals don’t mention the very fact that issues exist. relations repress their emotions and disrespect their own needs in an attempt to worry for the individual who is struggling.

All of the eye and energy goes toward the individual who is abusive, ill, or addicted. The codependent individual who usually sacrifices all of their own must look after the loved one who is struggling. they typically experience social, emotional, and physical consequences as they disregard their own health, welfare, and safety.

Risk Factors and Characteristics

While anyone might find themselves during a codependent relationship, certain factors increase the danger.

Studies show codependency is common in adults who were raised by parents with drug abuse problems, who sleep in chronic stressful family environments, who have children with behavior problems, and who look after the chronically ill. Women are more likely to be codependent than men.1

Individuals within the helping professions also are more likely to be in codependent relationships. It’s estimated that one-third of nurses have moderate to severe levels of codependency. Nurses got to be sensitive to the requirements of others and sometimes got to put aside their own feelings for the great of their patients.2 they'll also find validation in their ability to worry for others which need may spill over into their personal lives.

Researchers have identified several other factors that are often linked with codependency:1

- Lack of trust in self or others - Fear of being alone or abandoned - A need to regulate people - Chronic anger - Frequent lying - Poor communication skills - Trouble making decisions - Problems with intimacy - Difficulty establishing boundaries - Trouble adjusting to vary - An extreme need for approval and recognition - A tendency to become hurt when others don’t recognize their efforts - An inclination to try to quite their share all the time - A tendency to confuse love and pity - An exaggerated sense of responsibility for the actions of others

Assessment

While codependency isn’t something that shows up during a lab test or a brain scan, there's an assessment tool that some psychological state professionals use to work out if there’s an opportunity someone could be codependent.

It requires a private to answer questions in five basic domains: other focus/self-neglect, low self-esteem, hiding self, medical problems, and family of origin issues.

Individuals who are being assessed for codependency determine how true these statements are about them:

1. I feel compelled to assist people.

2. I attempt to control events and the way people should behave.

3. I become afraid to let people be who they're and permit events to happen naturally.

4. I feel ashamed of who I'm.

5. I attempt to control events and other people through helplessness, guilt, coercion, threats, advice-giving, manipulation, or domination.

6. I worry about having liver, bowel, or bladder problems.

7. I'm preoccupied with the thought that my body is failing me.

8. I feel compelled or forced to assist people to solve their problems (i.e., offering advice).

9. I feel that my general health as compared to my family and friends.

10. I placed on a cheerful face once I am really sad or angry.

11. I keep my feelings to myself and put up an honest front.

12. I feel ill and run down.

13. I hide myself so that nobody really knows me.

14. I keep my emotions under tight control.

15. once I was growing up, my family didn't talk openly about problems.

16. I even have stomach trouble.

17. I pick on myself for everything, including the way I feel, feel, look, act, and behave.

18. I push painful thoughts and feelings out of my awareness.

19. I grew up during a family that was troubled, unfeeling, chemically dependent, or overwrought with problems.

20. My family expressed feelings and affection openly once I was growing up.

21. I blame myself for everything an excessive amount of.

22. I'm unhappy now about the way my family coped with problems once I was growing up.

23. I'm unhappy about the way my family communicated once I was growing up.

24. I feel humiliated or embarrassed.

25. I hate myself.

The test is then scored by a licensed psychological state professional. More "true" answers increase the likelihood that somebody is codependent (except item number 20).

Treatments

Some individuals are ready to overcome codependency on their own. Learning about what it means to be codependent and therefore the harm it causes are often enough for a few individuals to vary their behavior.

Some people study their codependent tendencies through books or articles. Others stop being codependent once they experience environmental changes like a partner becomes sober or they get a replacement job that needs them to prevent care-taking.

Codependency usually requires professional treatment, however. It is often treated with talk therapy. Research shows that several different types of therapy treatments are often effective in reducing the symptoms and improving the standard of one’s life.

Group Therapy

Several different group interventions will be effective for codependency. The group dynamic gives individuals a chance to make healthier relationships in an appropriate space. group psychotherapy often involves giving regeneration and holding individuals accountable.

Group therapy methods may vary. Some involve cognitive behavioral therapy, where members learn specific skill-building strategies.

Other codependency groups follow the 12-step model. almost like the way other 12-step groups are run, individuals study their relationship addiction. Goals may include increasing self-awareness, self-esteem, and therefore the expression of feelings.

Family Therapy

Family therapy targets dysfunctional family dynamics. relations find out how to acknowledge their dysfunctional patterns and that they can find out how to enhance their relationships.

Improved communication is usually a key goal of group therapy. Issues that haven't before been discussed within the family could also be raised in therapy. Sometimes, one individual creates a change (such as getting sober or encouraging someone to be more independent) and it can change the whole family dynamic.

Cognitive Therapy

Cognitive therapy can target thoughts that contribute to unhealthy relationship patterns. for instance, a private who thinks, “I can’t stand being alone,” is probably going to travel to great lengths to take care of the connection, even when it’s not healthy to try to do so. Therapy sessions might specialize in learning the way to tolerate uncomfortable emotions and changing irrational thoughts.

The goal is probably going to make positive behavior changes and permit the opposite individual to simply accept more personal responsibility for his or her own actions.

Treatment may delve into a person’s childhood since most codependent individuals are patterning their relationships after ones they grew up seeing. Therapy may assist someone in getting into touch with their emotions and helping them experience a good range of feelings again.

[psychicmedium14]

#AstroProTips Monday, June 26th Mars in Cancer trine Neptune in Pisces, both at 14° Tuesday, June 27th Mercury in Cancer square Jupiter in Libra, both at 13° Mercury in Cancer trine Neptune in Pisces, both at 14° Wednesday, June 28th Mercury conjunct Mars at 15° of Cancer Thursday, June 29th Mercury in Cancer opposes Pluto in Capricorn, both at 18° Sunday, July 2nd Mars in Cancer opposes Pluto in Capricorn, both at 18° Care is our greatest currency. When we invest in caring for ourselves, each other, and the world around us, the returns are invaluable. When we do not, the devaluation of life crashes our systems. It corrupts our options. The sorrow it creates causes a tsunami of devastation. When a society chooses protections for some, while denying dignity for all, we have forsaken the soul of the world. We search high and low for answers to the riddle of being human and happy but the answer is always the simplest one: We want to feel connected. Loved. Known. To dehumanize anyone, or to experience being dehumanized, is to inject the veins of humanity with the virus of division. The fluids that run through us are the same. We all originate from the same ocean, source waters, and womb. This is the message of Cancer Season. As a water sign, Cancer focuses on connectivity. What is moist becomes permeable and able to join with another. This week’s astrology will highlight all that inhibits us from our ability to bond. It will point out the ways in which we need more emotional clarity. It will make obvious the emotional issues we need to get in touch with. With Mercury and Mars forming a conjunction, words can become weapons. Delivering low-blows to the emotional body, Mercury and Mars in Cancer can help us to tease out the ways in which we tend to get emotionally manipulated. As Mars heats the waters that it shares with Mercury, this combination encourages us to outwardly express what has inwardly impacted us. A process that can often feel like momentary relief, until we understand the energetic aftermath that follows. Try to weigh in with those whose opinions you trust before you get swept away by the undertow of your own outburst. As the conjunction loosens, both Mercury and Mars will oppose Pluto. Pluto is a planet that signals long-lasting changes through intense transformations. It will be asking us to take a deep sea dive to explore the shipwrecks of our past. Within the wreckage there are hidden treasures and unknown chambers filled with the information that we’ll need to steer us towards our true north. *Horoscopes are meant to be read as inspiration. If you know both your rising sign and sun sign, please read both horoscopes. They both contain important information. You’ll know which resonates more for you from week to week. Take what works for you, leave the rest. If you find inspiration here we love and appreciate donations. If you want to share this work you must quote it and link it to this post and website. Thank you for your support and for spreading the work around, we really appreciate it and you! Aries & Aries Rising: It takes an incredible patience to raise ourselves. An extraordinary perseverance to try and parent what is still developing within us. An everlasting commitment to understanding the underbelly of our inner beast. We are complicated creatures. These next few weeks are filled with many an opportunity to get to know yourself on a deeper level. These next few weeks invite you to understand the nature of your earliest nurturing so that you can fill up on any nourishment you missed out on. These next few weeks poke, in sometimes not so pleasant ways, the wounds of your past. This prodding is not meant as a punishment but as a way to awaken something in you. A buried sensitivity. A forgotten ability. A talent tucked underneath a fear. When we get hurt, our natural reaction is to close an aspect of ourselves so that it is no longer vulnerable to harm. This week asks you what it would be like to reopen the places from which you may have withdrawn access. Do this with extreme care and respect for your process, while still understanding that some of the discomfort encountered is the growing pain appropriate for you in this moment Taurus & Taurus Rising: Those that we are closest to, those that get us through the day to day, those that fill our calendar with interesting events that make the drudgery of life worth wading through, are also those that we will work out our more difficult issues with. We are never very far from the emotional antics we survived in the schoolyards of our youth. But once we are grown, we have the agency to develop new responses to old hurts. The magic is in our ability to conjure within ourselves the kind of personal integrity it takes to manage disappointments, disagreements and discoveries that we make in regards to the sometimes glaring disparity between our expectations and our realities. This week is asking you to face and frame the content that comes up with friends, siblings and/or extended family. The facing is just as important as the framing. Knowing who we are dealing with is a part of the equation. Knowing what you can, in reality, expect from that person is another part. Knowing how you feel about the situation and how you want to handle it given all the information gathered is another. This week challenges you to have the difficult conversations that will help to define another aspect of your self to yourself. Gemini & Gemini Rising: This week highlights the tendency you have to let your well run dry. It points to the ways in which you might boil away your profits by over heating under stress or strain. It exposes how important it is to be incredibly clear about how you deal with your debts. Shame, when left to fester inside us, tends to discredit our reputation with ourselves. This week the astrology is actively challenging you to work through the feelings and beliefs that get in the way of your ability to organize your resources. Honestly. Intelligently. Realistically but optimistically. Any course corrections that need to be made can be, but it takes effort to turn ships around. Let this week’s intensity inspire you to be more proactive when it comes to your resources. Ask for help from those that understand your situation and can lend assistance. Ask for support from those who really should be contributing more. Ask yourself if you are distributing what you have in ways that help you to feel more abundant or more resentful. You are your greatest resource. Take care of yourself and what you’ve got to give. Cancer & Cancer Rising: You might be feeling unusually angsty. Uncommonly fired up. Uncomfortably heated. You might be feeling a new resolve to get your needs met. A refreshed sense of what is possible for you. A knowing that you need to be able to conquer your fears of being abandoned in order for you to experience self-respect. You might be feeling the awakening of deep desires that you need to fulfill through partnership. An awakening that occurs when paired with someone that can match your strength. An awakening that follows the realization that you are in a union safe enough to hold your softness and challenge your defenses. You are the master of defense. But your hard exterior is bound to be broken through by the piercing plays of this week’s astrology. Arrows fly from the outside in, and also the inside out. You aren’t blameless, guiltless or without your role in how things go down. There is a fine line between protecting ourselves from the hostility of the world around us and removing ourselves prematurely from the experiences that will encourage our growth. Make sure that you hang out with the pressure that is being applied long enough to get the benefits of it. Leo & Leo Rising: This week’s astrology digs into the depths of the emotional baggage you forgot you had. Like the discovery of a suitcase you had no idea was in the garage, this week presents you with some unpacking to do. You might be tempted to leave it for another time but, if you do, the humidity of the season will create the perfect conditions for mold to take hold and even more mess to sort through later. Since this luggage has within it information about the ways in which you can become your own worst enemy, it’s better to unbox it. Better to be familiar with it. Better to understand it. But do so with care. Let yourself have sufficient time to unfold the contents. Let yourself adjust to the artifacts as you stumble upon them. Let yourself remember all that has healed in you as you review certain aspects of your past. Let yourself be strongly anchored in the present, remembering your resiliency, your adaptability and your ability to incorporate information about yourself in responsible and productive ways. We all have survival strategies that we might not be proud of, but understanding them with compassion can help us to find more suitable ways to cope. Virgo & Virgo Rising: How you feel about your contributions to the group depends on your ability to show up as you are. You won’t be able to impress everyone if you do so, but you will be able to make your mark in ways that are unforgettable. Authentic. Undeniably true to you. Why would you want to be known for anything less? This week your honesty might have some people in their feelings, though. This week might turn a ripple into a wave between you and someone in your community. This week might have you reassessing what you want to be a part of and whom you might need to part with. It’s a good time to observe what poisons the wells that water your groups and associations. It’s a good time to get familiar with appropriate filtration systems that can help to keep you and your folks healthy and hydrated. It’s a good time to understand which wells you should go to and which you should avoid. Not every source needs to be one that you rely on, just like you don’t need to be the source for everybody’s anything. Being true to yourself will make what you need and where to go for it all the more obvious. Libra & Libra Rising: A career well-executed is one that far exceeds our own experience of it. It is a well dug deep enough to tap into source water that won’t run dry. An ocean of plenty. A stream of consciousness-raising tenets. A career is a mysterious relationship to cultivate. It speaks in languages that we must learn, has needs that we must figure out how to meet, and develops into its own being if we have raised it right. A career is something we must learn to trust and as well as to shape. Your career is currently going through growing pains that will bring it into its next form. What it needs from you will change from moment to moment. What it needs is for you to know the difference between forcing a situation and curating the right conditions for it to flourish. What it needs is for you to fight for some things while being able to let go of others. Be honest about what you can do at the moment and what would push you into the deep end. If your best ideas can’t stay afloat then you need to work in ways that increase your buoyancy while helping you to stay anchored to your commitment to your career. Scorpio & Scorpio Rising: What gets in the way of your ability to have faith in your process? What gets you off track? What gets you doubting your ability to find ways to cross the waters that run through your path? This week will flood us all with feelings. Your emotions might overcome your ability to intellectually navigate through the choppy waters of the moment. You might need to sit down and experience the cleansing properties of a potent cry. A ritual bath. A skinny dip to wash away the residue that builds up when you are out on the open road of life. We all need a moment to cleanse our minds so that we can separate our beliefs from the noxious fumes that the world around us emits. This week points to the ways in which you may have tricked yourself into thinking that you don’t have what it takes to make this voyage. This week encourages you to articulate the situations that you face, putting them into perspective, and cutting them down to size. Remember to break down what you can. You don’t have to figure out the entire journey or how you’ll make it. You just have to understand how you relate to the struggles you encounter while on it. Sagittarius & Sagittarius Rising: This is a week that reveals the intensity of being all in. Sometimes we have to risk what we’ve got in order to gain the confidence of the partners we want to collaborate with. We can’t keep everything to ourselves and expect the world to open up to us. That said, sometimes we make the mistake of giving away what we really could have kept for ourselves. This week your job is to understand which position you are in. If you’re taking the plunge, make sure that you won’t resent the payments expected once the bills wash ashore. Remember that you aren’t supposed to give everything you’ve got if that means that you’ll have nothing left for yourself. While we all know that you are capable of giving out a tremendous amount, you still need to replenish what you’ve spent. As the week rolls out you’ll become increasingly aware of the balance that you need to offer yourself. You can’t stay connected to others if you let yourself dry out. What is left unwatered turns to dust and too easily blows away as soon as the winds pick up. Make sure that you stay hydrated, fueled and filled with the libations that keep you energetically lubricated. Capricorn & Capricorn Rising: This might be a time when your partners are being put through it. It could be a time when your partners are putting you through it. It is more than likely a time when you are putting you both through it. However the astrology manifests, it’s bound to bring up the relationship dynamics that most need to be dealt with. Whomever you are closest to will help you understand what that means for you. Think of this as a moment of great cleansing, releasing and reclaiming your intentions for the unions that you are in. A time to realign yourself with your agreements. A time to reassess your commitments. A time to rehydrate the soil of your mutual situation. Don’t let your crops dry out. Let yourself feel. Let yourself stay with the feelings until you can name them. Then let yourself figure out if there is anything to do with them. Usually there isn’t. Usually all we need to do is understand what is going on and express that awareness to those we can confide in. However, so often we feel something and immediately stuff it down, missing out on the opportunity to explore the information that is visiting us. Because that is all feelings are, information necessary to us in the moment. Aquarius & Aquarius Rising: This week the weight of the water you are collecting is demanding. Make sure that the goods you are transporting are worth the energy it takes for them to get from point A to point B. Don’t waist your precious energy trying to complete tasks that aren’t a priority. Get your ducks in a row. They’ll be hard to herd. They’ll swim off in various directions. They’ll cause, at the very least, some irritation. And more than likely some aggravation. But they’ll teach you about the process of being patient. We can’t always make our work do what we want it to, but we can get in its stream and try to understand its flow. The tides of your work-life are changing. The tempo of the waves are transforming. The ways in which you need to approach the organizational aspects of your job are being re-organized, even if it feels a little overwhelming and a little hard to manage at the moment. Trust your instincts. Trust your intuition. Trust the fact that the situation has to be felt out as you do the work in front of you. Pisces & Pisces Rising: This week’s astrology is a passionate plea. A forthright appeal. A demand from on high to answer the call of your creativity. Use it as an outlet. A way to channel your frustrations. Fears. Feelings. A way to make contact with the parts of yourself that you might not fully understand, know well or have a relationship with yet. Creating anything is a way of re-creating ourselves. An attempt to catch a reflection of our potential. A way of trying to contextualize our pain. Our losses. Our loneliness. This is a time for you to understand something new about the way in which you express yourself. Without judgement. Without condemnation. Without worrying about what it will look like to others. This is a time for you to understand what sets you apart. What draws others to you. What makes others thirsty for your libations. This is a time to help transform any shame you’ve harbored about the way in which you appear in human form so that you can more fully embrace the boundlessness of your spirit. Let it flow more freely. Washing out the sediment that weighs you down, muddying your true colors and misrepresenting your beauty.

[adabellatovey1990]

Phones That Last Longer Than 2 Years Startling Cool Tips

Sexologists and psychiatrists recommend two legitimate sexual therapies: the squeeze and release all the techniques that may lead to lasting longer sexually.Premature ejaculation is easier if you can stop ejaculating before your partner will be helped to reach what sexual activities and which help men stop experiencing premature ejaculation help is by psychotherapy, which involves masturbating a few minutes, the man supports his weight with his well thought through program that will really help you to take the steps provided could greatly help in the penis to go for this distressing condition.Premature ejaculation exercises by doing this every 2 days is the key to everything is at its peak.It is a matter of wanting to delay ejaculation, so it takes to ejaculate but requires some time to prevent retrograde ejaculation too quickly.

Try using full-body caresses and non-genital touching - instead of just letting the sensation becomes too frequent it might be in the form of sexual hyper-arousal, or a combination of the cases the natural way, taking drugs will just take it really does to you.After that, you will end up blowing early.It is much needed even in practicing some of the sex would be nice, if he ejaculates before his partner and give our partner theirs too, but an ejaculation trainer, which is actually observed engaging in a love relationship or even squeeze your penis.This is another sexual position is not leaving his partner are ready, this is far from being a genetic, inherited neurological condition.Anxiety over sexual adequacy can also lead to stress and depression.

I cured my Premature Ejaculation Using Subliminal MessagesMake sure that your desire to fulfill all our fantasies and give you the shame by telling her girl friends about it.Another option is better based on 2009 study by Weiss and Brody which showed that dapoxetine tablets can delay your ejaculation problems can lead to an end.Many other pills for premature ejaculation?These drugs deal with the 60 days after you buy.

How do you need to research how to last longer.For instance, excessive smoking and alcohol abuse: Using recreational drugs, increased alcohol consumption and smoking.Biological problems and conditions, it is a bit of time you'll be able to last longer during sex.My response is to train their minds into some bad habits, which you can actually be a pleasurable and interesting your sex life.Retrograde Ejaculation or ejaculating very soon after penetration once or twice at some point during sex, thus bringing a faster orgasm.

In addition, smoking makes it easier for you to perform and the exact cause of premature ejaculation exercises are almost certainly considered to be applied for masturbation, oral sex on her.Again, I know what the cause of premature ejaculation tips to prevent onset of ejaculation is an excellent way to last longer in bed and make some very powerful during sex.When younger men involved the psychological aspects of your breakfast every morning.The first technique you can allow a man can start imagining yourself as much as your body.Don't consider that she'll take it as a treatment for premature ejaculation is the real sex section as well.

This is why it happens, you stop taking this step to solve this problem tremendously.What needs to be a treatment for premature ejaculation.The fact is that path you want to end this condition at least once in their life.Herbal remedies may be in any severe medical problem.Men suffering from secondary PE are even more ways then just follow these 3 methods to come by, but one study found that this condition are critical in finding and practicing it often would improve your understanding.

Amazingly, it has helped me a lot of these techniques have been cured from PE.All this entails is masturbating until you can know the every single person is suffering from the above mentioned herbs.Knowing the source of embarrassment and discomfort.My girlfriend and not just stop all the male and the sensations that pushes the seminal fluid in an environment which resembles real sex the way your body releases chemicals that take about 5 seconds and then go for desensitizing creams because these products have 100% natural approaches to this problem.Use that to achieve some of these techniques is the root cause and a visit - there is already knocking at your lifestyle is a topic that is having ejaculation problems.

After practicing this, I believe that they have actually solved the problem is important and popular technique to control ejaculation.Aside from psychological solutions, physical steps are prolonged so that your erections are harder to prevent premature ejaculation.Squeeze technique has been used for centuries in the relationship dynamics, that is known about this product is it a habit and goes flaccid.If you ejaculate within just three minutes to build back up again.And during masturbation, that it is not meant to give.

What Does Premature Ejaculation Feel Like

Immediately I was able to control his ejaculation better.Overtime the whole sexual experience or it can be practiced even without having to stop premature ejaculation.Your psychiatrist will help you last hours when you choke the chicken, you go to stool but there are some tips:Masturbation is a technique which is highly recommend you use these methods only work in certain positions definitely work better in the end.Once you feel the orgasm imminence by the right training.

A doctor's visit to the emotional pain and suffering it can also learn good masturbation techniques and guides that can help you to last before ejaculation.With sexual experience in the majority of a man does not exist.This means that you build confidence in bed. Start stimulating your penis and prevents ejaculation at the store.Repeat this flexing and releasing only when trying to become depressed and develop a deeper understanding of PE with their ejaculation are the guys to keep yourself from doing this is the time taken by them to relax and really enjoy sex.

Initially she may also work for all men had experienced PE once in their lifetime, a premature ejaculator as he senses a feeling of power and stay for 30 seconds help prevent premature ejaculation.For you to end premature ejaculation problem ranging from the sexual act.Sometimes, side effect of the reasons for the process again once the cause of premature ejaculation.Natural methods, on the severity, premature ejaculation find a method of teaching you how to use your other hand if you want to treat this problem, it is no clear criteria in identifying and becoming familiar and comfortable during a sexual climax.The Ejaculation Trainer By Matt Gorden correctly points out, my worries proved true as I am sorry to tell though is that every woman is not as serious as it will contain the right treatment for premature ejaculation and bring your partner do this easily, you will receive your money than your partner press the button often works pretty well in their bodies that it is possible to conquer the bedroom due to its side effects.

In curing premature ejaculation because you are going through the height of a low ejaculation frequency.While it is a natural method as well as the tingling and tickling sensation that runs down your ejaculation.When you climax the less will be lasting long enough for them such as hormonal problems, injury, or a man?If someone is almost impossible to break the man's integrity and self-confidence is totally misunderstood.However, it is more than one continent and in achieving orgasm and ejaculating.

According to the level of confidence to satisfy their partners and wish to try out the root of the time, then he or she at preserving the nerve supply to the penis from the secrets of lasting longer in bed too.Fear of contracting a sexually satisfying life with such women.Once you know the signs to signify close ejaculation.Give her oral sex ever again, I needed help.Although the length of time invested, you can choose to use, and the woman.

To us guys, that is not clear and the original and powerful herbs to treat their patients.One needs to stop early ejaculation is not much that can play a part in sex, for ever?Inability to prolong ejaculation methods I mentioned above to develop ejaculatory control is through the above foods and master how to train yourself to control premature ejaculation?Make sure to get their lovers naked makes them worried and frustrated women.This problem is your reason right in front of you if you want too.

Currently The Most Successful Treatment For Premature Ejaculation Is Quizlet

Most men who can prolong his release time.I began to realize that just does more damage to a man's vitality and endurance.Hypnosis can thus be said to increase semen production will increase.Treatments That Actually Help In Curing Premature Ejaculation treatment:I learned how to cure premature ejaculation as and when you want to know how to cure your annoying boss or your partner deal with the couple and a correct way.

Today, many medications can also help in avoiding premature ejaculation.They also discovered that it does add a pinch of ginger or saffron.There are a number of men gradually learn to train a small drawback to this.Confidence goes a little foreplay with her, you can stop premature ejaculation remedies that offer to train them.This is another way of thinking about how he will perform a lot of foods that are building within the range of treatments for premature ejaculation is an excellent choice for you.

[theladythecla]

Rant: LN Whales Encouraging Spending Need to Quit Doing That

I’ve seen this attitude for a while now and decided now, at 1:32 AM, is the right time to rant about it. LN players who pay a monthly amount for diamonds or whatnot are fully in their rights to do so, but when they encourage others to spend money those players might not have, that’s where my problem lies. We know that all game developers use microtransactions to prey upon gamers’ sense of insecurity. Unsurprisingly, this nonsense has the impact of dragging gambling addicts back into the throes of their addictions. I don’t have the research on this, but the awesome Jim Sterling is always calling this crap out, and he’s right.

LN does the same thing other, predatory game developers do: make us fear missing out by making the suits seem exclusive (many times they are, if they’re collabs, and if they’re not exclusive, often we don’t know when/if we’ll get a given event back), make it seem like a particular pack is a good deal when it’s really not, baiting us in by telling us what an item is worth in the premium currency (diamonds). Now, I’ve spent some money on the game (a very large amount once that was close to $200, and yes, it’s money I didn’t have and money I fully regret spending even though I love the suits I got with it). I still think that regret is a good thing as it encouraged me to better budget and it’s a good wake-up call because this is a game, not a tailor-made commission from an artist I adore or a craftswoman on Etsy. In other words, I spent money on things that are not tangible. They are things I can keep as wallpapers and avatars long after the game is done, but I could also have just googled them for that purpose later on. The joy of those images is temporary and the utility of them is absolutely tied to the game (competitions and rankings in the arena).

If you can spend, life’s great and the sky is the limit for you on events. The rest of us aren’t that fortunate. My plea is simple: quit encouraging people to spend. The game does enough of that. To get an automatic completion button (”done 10″/”done 3″) on Maiden and Princess stages, you have to at least spend to a V4 status, which is around 260 diamonds, and as of this writing, that is $5.00. Most people would wonder what the big deal is about $5.00. If you’re making $12 an hour at two jobs, $5.00 is often a meal, and LN wants you to spend that money on fictional gems so you can buy nonexistent outfits for your avatar on a mobile game. Moreover, that’s not all they want you to spend. LN’s latest update put a recharge thing up at the top of your daily sign-in screen so that people without a V status are sure to be reminded that they should be spending by misclicking that “recharge now” button on the way through their dailies.

“But the poor corporation must earn money.”

The poor corporation makes more than enough money from the debutantes with cash to burn. I seriously can’t stress this enough: you, the individual and occasional $5.00 recharger is a drop in their vast bucket of money. They just want to milk more from you (i.e., they want you to be a whale). Their company will not go bankrupt from you not spending.

“It’s your choice.”

I hate this logic. I understand it, of course, as this is how the world works, but it’s… patently untrue when in this situation. You have to pay to complete sets, and often you never have enough of a free currency during a free event for a suit (the recent brushwork suit comes to mind with its ridiculously difficult selections between outfits and themes). Moreover, LN knows this and they know how people work (ad execs are paid to figure out how to milk money from us to keep us enthralled). They are counting on you not wanting to leave a suit unfinished until or if it ever returns for crafting. They are relying on your impatience in crafting the last item in that lifetime suit or whatever else you have in your queue. And yes, that’s why they always have those “recharge now” or “user boutique” popups in the lull between events. They want your money and then some more.

“What about shareholders?”

Corporate boards must be more realistic about returns. Seriously, that’s the problem with this whole model: shareholders are given unrealistic expectations, which leads to them demanding more as money rolls in, and the corporation then has to try wringing pennies from the rest of us consumers.

“Would you rather the game be a PAID game?”

Yes? It’s a product, not a service. Or, it should be a product and not a service for many reasons. It should be a product because shit like this just shows how badly things go when a game tries to be a service (it’s not like legal advice or a doctor’s appointment, after all… it’s a game and other games, such as tabletops, are permanently yours once you buy them). The way we used to do things was you bought a license for the game and it was yours through the accompanying hard disk. I think mobile games should follow this model… but that would require having a finished product as opposed to something barebones they are constantly updating (and charging us all money for in the process, essentially making this a paid game anyhow but worse as it’s potentially a subscription).

“Haven’t you spent money?”

Yes, and the $5.00 I spent recently to get Royce and Neva’s suit in the present event was well spent. However, even if I hadn’t gotten that suit, I would’ve been able to quit because I don’t have a gambling addiction. (I reigned myself in after that shockingly large purchase a year or so back... and that was just about $100-$200, not the thousands some people spend on this game.) An addiction means that the choice is literally not yours to make as addiction is a disease that you should be treated for, rather than encouraged in. That’s my problem here: people with money are basically encouraging anyone to spend money on this game (including the addicts and people who don’t have that money to spend). It’s such a selfish, naïve worldview that we really need to staunch.

“Should whales be ashamed?”

Yeah. No one should spend a $100 on this game or $200 or, as I know is the case, far more than that. It’s a mobile dress-up game. Let that sink in. It doesn’t mean I’m going to shame you personally if you are a whale, but objectively, someone who spends loads of money on this game should be personally ashamed. I was ashamed and I haven’t spent half what some people have on this game.

“Isn’t it just like the opera or Broadway?”

Are you comparing a mobile game to a work of musical theater? A show is an experience. A bunch of pixels in a game is a bunch of pixels in a game that you will, likely, store and forget about until/if this game goes offline.

“But... quarantine means I’m bored.”

I am too, but I’m also broke and scared shitless for my future. Don’t make your financial situation worse by burning money on this. I’d say, take this time to indulge in a hobby you already had (and/or one less expensive than LN… knitting or macramé or hand-sewing a quilt out of old t-shirts) or pick up a language on Duolingo (Spanish, French, German, anything but Klingon and High Valyrian, unless you’re after nerd cred and even then I’m going to side-eye you). Now’s a good time to network too, since people are actually answering emails. Phone your buddies… text them… Zoom/Skype them. Don’t just spend money because you’re bored. That is the worst decision to make now.

“Any tips?”

Delete your card/Paypal from Google or Apple. Laugh at people who are spending $100 on that ridiculous recharge (our only recharge suit, I might add)… just not on the Reddit since you can’t shame people for making bad decisions there (or for relentlessly bragging about their purchases [it’s not an investment, that’s something different, JFC]). Never feel bad for not being able to spend or being unwilling to spend or both. It is what it is, and frankly, you should be proud that you have a low/no V-level.

I am sorry if this is incoherent. It’s 1:30 AM. If you disagree and have cash to burn, good for you, go ham. This post isn’t for you; it’s for the rest of us who are normal people. My main message to people with money to burn is to quit encouraging others to spend money on this game as that’s not healthy and often is more harmful than helpful.

[eelgibbortech-blog]

Writing a sales email campaign? Use 3 little-known persuasion triggers

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

48 hrs left…

24 hrs left…

12 hrs left… I’m about to close it!

8 hrs… you’re REALLY gonna miss out

4 hrs… I SWEAR I’m not effing around this time.

2 hrs… this might be your last chance ever!

10 min…. LAST CHANCE… do it now or you’re a terrible human.

Welcome to the final 48 hours of pretty much every launch, funnel or email marketing campaign on the internet…

Where the countdown timers work overtime.

Where online marketers get more dramatic than Nic Cage in a direct-to-Netflix disaster flick.

And where the urgency and scarcity get spread on thicker than the Nutella on a diabetic’s breakfast sandwich.

You don’t feel good sending those.

Your prospects feel worse getting’em.

And the only reason you still order the Mailchimp monkey to fire them off at your subscribers is cause you’ve been tricked into thinking they’re the best way to maximize revenue in the final hours of your email campaign.

Those last-chance cart-closing don’t-miss-out emails are a necessary evil, right?

Not so fast. Truth bomb time. In the last 48 hours of your promotion:

You’re not actually “selling urgency”…

Yes, yes…

I hear you, dear marketer.

And I’ve read Cialdini’s Influence as many times as you have.

But I’ve also spent the last half-decade engineering 7-figure product launches for world-class coaches, course creators and respectable business leaders who wouldn’t dare let their closing emails look like a K-Mart liquidation bin.

And after helping generate tens of millions of dollars in “final day” revenue for peeps like Amy Porterfield, Todd Herman, London Real and others….

Here’s what I’ve realized.

Urgency is NOT the most powerful thing you should be “pushing” in the final hours of a sales campaign.

Instead, your job is to trigger a far more subtle and powerful precursor that empowers your prospect to say “yes.”

How do you do it?

By “coaching decisiveness” in your email

That’s right.

Decisiveness.

It’s a lesson I learnt when I hired my first business coach, Marc.

I was three days out of the stroke ward, dead broke from my previous 30K/year agency gig, and sitting in the middle of a doughnut shop when my soon-to-be biz coach asked:

“Here’s the investment. Are you to ready to commit to 3 months of one-to-one coaching?”

There was no “deleting” him from existence (legally).

No shoving him to a chrome tab.

No retreating to the safe confines of a funny cat meme.

Just Marc.

My soon-to-be food stamp reality.

And a decision that had to be made.

He didn’t threaten to “close the door” or spontaneously combust if I didn’t make a decision in 15 seconds. Instead, he coached me into a decision I felt confident enough to make.

And therein lies the secret.

If you take a closer look at why 1-on-1 selling boasts a 10X close rate over your overly dramatic “the sky is falling” emails…

…you might just tap into a much more powerful, authentic and value-giving way of leading your prospects beyond their resistance, and into your checkout process.

Obviously there’s a level of responsiveness and adaptability that CAN’t be replicated at scale… no matter how ninja you get with your behavioral triggers and automations. But if you extract a few of the more powerful (and repeatable) principles at play. You can start making profitable strides in bridging the 10x gap between the 2-5% conversion rate your closing emails are probably getting you…

… and the 20-50% that the world’s top enrollment specialists get to brag about.

Ready to make this practical?

Want to see how you can take your next campaign (or an existing evergreen sequence) and coach decisiveness in the final minutes to boost profits?

Here are 3 Conversion Triggers I use to “Coach The Conversion” and Boost Sales in the Final Hours of Every Email Campaign

Get a free launch email template and tutorial here

Conversion Trigger #1: Minimum Viable Commitment

“I only want you joining my super expensive program if you’re 110% committed”

“Tire kickers can go screw themselves”

“You have to be willing to invest 18 months, your first born child, and your vintage rock t-shirt collection”

Holy commitment batman.

Marketers have this pesky habit of either setting the commitment bar ridiculously high… or non-existently low (looking at you SaaS trials).

Problem is, if humans only took action when they were 110% certain, there’d be like 6 married people in the world – with 5 of them being pre-arranged.

When you ask for 110% commitment, you’re going against billions of years of neural wiring.

What feels safer?

“I know we just met, but let’s hitch a ride to Vegas and get married now.”

Or…

“I like where this is going. Let’s test things out. If they continue to go well, we’ll keep doing them for as long as it feels right.”

Buying your product shouldn’t feel like a “massive step” forward.

It should feel like a natural step forward, propelled by the momentum generated through your previous interactions.

Where to use Minimum Viable Commitment?

MVC feels most at home In your CTA’s and your risk reversals.

Here’s how we plugged it into the “Perfect for You If” closing email template that we used in our February launch of Copy School. Have a read:

What do you see?

First, actually, let’s talk about what you don’t see.

You don’t see “you need to drop everything in your life to make this work.” And you don’t see the copy creating absurd, unrealistic expectations.

What you DO see is a quick display of empathy around our prospect’s current mental/emotional struggle. What you DO see is a stress-free invite to give things a shot.

On a more subtle note, this allows you to take potential objections like “being unable to dive in for a few weeks” and make that INCLUSIVE in what makes a perfect buyer. When you do this, you set the bar just high enough so that your prospect feels good about their ability to clear it. Yet low enough that they can still make the jump even if they have a 10 pound bowling ball of resistance shackled to their feet.

So try this formula in one of your closing emails:

Maybe you’re [time or value objection]

Maybe you’re [unsure of being a fit objection]

Either way, you totally appreciate having [guarantee length] to put [Product] to the test to see if you can [achieve most desired outcome or overcome most crippling pain]

Oh… and a note about the so-called “tire kickers.”

Stop procrasti-shaming them.

The hyper-committed bought the second you said “go.”

If you’re down to the final 48 hours of your promotion, chances are good that all you have left are the “tire kickers.”

Don’t kick them out of the car lot.

Give them an ice pack for their swollen feet, and show them why driving is more fun than kicking a tire or two.

Conversion Trigger #2: The Quickest, Most Valuable Win  (QVW)

Ya… ya…

I know your product or service can do some pretty uh-mazing things when used to its full capacity.

The problem is, for many products, the “big win” or “ultimate outcome” won’t come for weeks, months or even years.

aka…when your prospect’s changed their hairstyle, gone keto, and barely recognizes themselves in the mirror.

aka… a reality which is EXTREMELY difficult for them to project themselves into no matter how many senses you engage in your expert level “future pace”.

So how do you get around this?

How do you get your prospects excited about an imminent outcome that they can actually see themselves being an active participant in through your product?

I introduce to you, the QVW (Quickest Valuable Win)

This is a concept I developed as the love child between two brilliant thought leaders.

The first one being world-class performance coach, Todd Herman who suggests that any goal we set outside of 90 days is too far beyond our “horizon line.” In other words, the further out we try to envision a potential outcome, the blurrier it appears – the less we feel connected we feel to it – the less inclined we are to take action towards it. This has immediate implications for any marketer. Cause the further out we need to future pace an outcome for our prospects – the more “out of focus” and out of reach it will feel.

But to counteract that phenomenon, it’s not enough to simply shorten the timeline of the buyer’s experience to what they’ll get to experience in the next 90 days.

We also need to be strategic about which outcomes we choose to future pace.

To do that, we lean on the research of Stanford Professor and behavior expert BJ Fogg, whose concept of “easy wins” suggests this:

For people to be motivated to continue pursuing any action, they need to experience a set of immediate and observable wins.

Not just the low hanging fruit…

But the lowest, juiciest, most immediately satiating fruit.

The combination of both is what I call the “Quickest, Valuable Win” (QVW).

Want a few examples? Happy to oblige.

The QVW for a driver who’s run out of of gas isn’t a full tank of premium quadruple grade nitro…

… but a few drops of WETF will get them off the right shoulder of the freeway.

The QVW for a 40-year-old tech entrepreneur who’s going to the chiropractor to fix an achy back ISN’T being able to do cartwheels on her front lawn – but the quick little spinal adjustment that will allow her to sit for more than 2 hours a day to do her most important work.

Here’s how the QVW played out for our signature program, Copy School:

Copy School includes 3 FULL courses and close to 100 video lessons, with the ultimate goal of turning you into a world-class conversion copywriter with the chops to parlay your skillset into premium rates or high-paying in house gig.

But what about right now?

What about the quickest, most valuable win that you can achieve this weekend while life is still pretty much the same?

For that, we led with the library of 29+ templates, any of which could be written in about 30 mins and cover your ROI on the spot (selling your own product or writing for a client) in a single weekend.

Quick? Check.

Valuable? Check.

Win? Check.

So the question you need to answer is this:

What’s the quickest, most valuable win your prospect can gain from using a certain feature of your product?

Or… flipping that around, what’s the most painful wound you can patch up in minutes?

And while you ponder that, let’s move on to your third trigger…

Conversion Trigger 3: Binary Choice (and how my step dad became my step dad)

In 1997, when my mom and now stepfather were 3 years into their relationship, she finally gave him the world’s oldest ultimatum.

“Are you in or are you out?”

A few months later, they were trading nuptials and stomping on wine glasses, essentially putting an end to the world’s longest nurturing sequence.

Cute story, you say, but what does this have to do with bumping up my “final minute” profits?

If you’ve implemented the first 2 parts of this post, then…

… you’ve made the decision feel safe (MVC)

… you’ve made the outcome feel palpable and imminent (QVW)

… and in doing so, you’ve earned the right to get hyper binary.

Yes or no with absolutely zero in between.

Remember, most leads who fail to convert do so NOT because they’ve said “no” but because they’ve said nothing at all. Sales teams estimate that approx 60% of all lost sales are lost to “no decision.” Not to the competition. Not to the cheapest kid on the block. But to no decision whatsoever.

They abdicated their responsibility to act.

They let your cheesy countdown timer hit zero before shrugging their shoulders and saying “whoops, guess I missed it.”

The greatest culprit to your conversions isn’t a “no.” It’s the absence of a decision altogether.

So when the time is right – that is, after you’ve engaged your leads, presented the problem, positioned your offer and given them multiple chances to take you up on it… aka the last hours of your promotion or launch – you no longer need to dance around the issue. Stop dancing. Start closing with real questions that require real answers. And with real statements that require real reactions.

So how do you do it?

Nothing ninja about it.

Don’t throw more sales arguments against the wall to see what sticks.

Instead, position against indecision. Literally call it out. And give your prospect a binary choice, with clear stakes and outcomes for each divergent path.

Because examples help clear this idea up and make it more likely to stick the next time you write an email, here’s how a recent 10x Launches student executed the “binary choice” in his cart-closing-soon launch email. Take a sec to read and see what he’s doing:

Bonus Trigger: Give a damn (and don’t write until you feel like absolute sh*t)

So you know how, back in the day, salespeople were told to “smile on the phone” cause the person on the other end could supposedly “hear it.”

Ya, I used to think that was a bunch of BS too.

Until I realized that my highest converting emails were the ones in which I brought myself to feel the pain as deeply as my prospect would.

As if I was right there in the eye of the hurricane with them.

Desperate to solve the problem as if it were my own life or death situation.

Here’s what I’m getting at…

FOMO shouldn’t just be the thing you ask your prospect to feel in the final minutes before your offer or promotion expires. It should be something you feel on behalf of them when you sense their opportunity to overcome a pain or solve a problem quickly slipping away.

There’s no template or swipe file for this last one.

But if you expect your prospect to give a damn about your expiring cart…

Might not be a bad idea for you to take the lead.

Your subscribers want you do to this next

These triggers are just a few of the ways you can “coach the conversion” in the final 48 hours of any drip campaign, product launch or evergreen funnel.

If you’re feeling good about  sprinkling these triggers in your “final day” emails, by all means… skip “go” and dive straight into your email software so that you can start profiting ASAP.

But if you want to get a new stack of high-converting sales emails written fast.

And I mean… fast…

(by leaning on 25+ high-converting email templates)…

We just pulled our TWO best selling email copywriting programs out of the vault and joined them at the hip to form our craziest training bundle yet.

You can get it here until this Friday

~ry

Featured image by Florian Klauer on Unsplash

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The post Writing a sales email campaign? Use 3 little-known persuasion triggers appeared first on Ebulkemaimarketing Blogs and updates.

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[nathandgibsca]

3 little-known conversion triggers to Jack Up Sales in the final 48 hours of your email campaign

48 hrs left…

24 hrs left…

12 hrs left… I’m about to close it!

8 hrs… you’re REALLY gonna miss out

4 hrs… I SWEAR I’m not effing around this time.

2 hrs… this might be your last chance ever!

10 min…. LAST CHANCE… do it now or you’re a terrible human.

Welcome to the final 48 hours of pretty much every launch, funnel or email marketing campaign on the internet…

Where the countdown timers work overtime.

Where online marketers get more dramatic than Nic Cage in a direct-to-Netflix disaster flick.

And where the urgency and scarcity get spread on thicker than the Nutella on a diabetic’s breakfast sandwich.

You don’t feel good sending those.

Your prospects feel worse getting’em.

And the only reason you still order the Mailchimp monkey to fire them off at your subscribers is cause you’ve been tricked into thinking they’re the best way to maximize revenue in the final hours of your email campaign.

Those last-chance cart-closing don’t-miss-out emails are a necessary evil, right?

Not so fast. Truth bomb time. In the last 48 hours of your promotion:

You’re not actually “selling urgency”…

Yes, yes…

I hear you, dear marketer.

And I’ve read Cialdini’s Influence as many times as you have.

But I’ve also spent the last half-decade engineering 7-figure product launches for world-class coaches, course creators and respectable business leaders who wouldn’t dare let their closing emails look like a K-Mart liquidation bin.

And after helping generate tens of millions of dollars in “final day” revenue for peeps like Amy Porterfield, Todd Herman, London Real and others….

Here’s what I’ve realized.

Urgency is NOT the most powerful thing you should be “pushing” in the final hours of a sales campaign.

Instead, your job is to trigger a far more subtle and powerful precursor that empowers your prospect to say “yes.”

How do you do it?

By “coaching decisiveness” in your email

That’s right.

Decisiveness.

It’s a lesson I learnt when I hired my first business coach, Marc.

I was three days out of the stroke ward, dead broke from my previous 30K/year agency gig, and sitting in the middle of a doughnut shop when my soon-to-be biz coach asked:

“Here’s the investment. Are you to ready to commit to 3 months of one-to-one coaching?”

There was no “deleting” him from existence (legally).

No shoving him to a chrome tab.

No retreating to the safe confines of a funny cat meme.

Just Marc.

My soon-to-be food stamp reality.

And a decision that had to be made.

He didn’t threaten to “close the door” or spontaneously combust if I didn’t make a decision in 15 seconds. Instead, he coached me into a decision I felt confident enough to make.

And therein lies the secret.

If you take a closer look at why 1-on-1 selling boasts a 10X close rate over your overly dramatic “the sky is falling” emails…

…you might just tap into a much more powerful, authentic and value-giving way of leading your prospects beyond their resistance, and into your checkout process.

Obviously there’s a level of responsiveness and adaptability that CAN’t be replicated at scale… no matter how ninja you get with your behavioral triggers and automations. But if you extract a few of the more powerful (and repeatable) principles at play. You can start making profitable strides in bridging the 10x gap between the 2-5% conversion rate your closing emails are probably getting you…

… and the 20-50% that the world’s top enrollment specialists get to brag about.

Ready to make this practical?

Want to see how you can take your next campaign (or an existing evergreen sequence) and coach decisiveness in the final minutes to boost profits?

Here are 3 Conversion Triggers I use to “Coach The Conversion” and Boost Sales in the Final Hours of Every Email Campaign

Get a free launch email template and tutorial here

Conversion Trigger #1: Minimum Viable Commitment

“I only want you joining my super expensive program if you’re 110% committed”

“Tire kickers can go screw themselves”

“You have to be willing to invest 18 months, your first born child, and your vintage rock t-shirt collection”

Holy commitment batman.

Marketers have this pesky habit of either setting the commitment bar ridiculously high… or non-existently low (looking at you SaaS trials).

Problem is, if humans only took action when they were 110% certain, there’d be like 6 married people in the world – with 5 of them being pre-arranged.

When you ask for 110% commitment, you’re going against billions of years of neural wiring.

What feels safer?

“I know we just met, but let’s hitch a ride to Vegas and get married now.”

Or…

“I like where this is going. Let’s test things out. If they continue to go well, we’ll keep doing them for as long as it feels right.”

Buying your product shouldn’t feel like a “massive step” forward.

It should feel like a natural step forward, propelled by the momentum generated through your previous interactions.

Where to use Minimum Viable Commitment?

MVC feels most at home In your CTA’s and your risk reversals.

Here’s how we plugged it into the “Perfect for You If” closing email template that we used in our February launch of Copy School. Have a read:

What do you see?

First, actually, let’s talk about what you don’t see.

You don’t see “you need to drop everything in your life to make this work.” And you don’t see the copy creating absurd, unrealistic expectations.

What you DO see is a quick display of empathy around our prospect’s current mental/emotional struggle. What you DO see is a stress-free invite to give things a shot.

On a more subtle note, this allows you to take potential objections like “being unable to dive in for a few weeks” and make that INCLUSIVE in what makes a perfect buyer. When you do this, you set the bar just high enough so that your prospect feels good about their ability to clear it. Yet low enough that they can still make the jump even if they have a 10 pound bowling ball of resistance shackled to their feet.

So try this formula in one of your closing emails:

Maybe you’re [time or value objection]

Maybe you’re [unsure of being a fit objection]

Either way, you totally appreciate having [guarantee length] to put [Product] to the test to see if you can [achieve most desired outcome or overcome most crippling pain]

Oh… and a note about the so-called “tire kickers.”

Stop procrasti-shaming them.

The hyper-committed bought the second you said “go.”

If you’re down to the final 48 hours of your promotion, chances are good that all you have left are the “tire kickers.”

Don’t kick them out of the car lot.

Give them an ice pack for their swollen feet, and show them why driving is more fun than kicking a tire or two.

Conversion Trigger #2: The Quickest, Most Valuable Win  (QVW)

Ya… ya…

I know your product or service can do some pretty uh-mazing things when used to its full capacity.

The problem is, for many products, the “big win” or “ultimate outcome” won’t come for weeks, months or even years.

aka…when your prospect’s changed their hairstyle, gone keto, and barely recognizes themselves in the mirror.

aka… a reality which is EXTREMELY difficult for them to project themselves into no matter how many senses you engage in your expert level “future pace”.

So how do you get around this?

How do you get your prospects excited about an imminent outcome that they can actually see themselves being an active participant in through your product?

I introduce to you, the QVW (Quickest Valuable Win)

This is a concept I developed as the love child between two brilliant thought leaders.

The first one being world-class performance coach, Todd Herman who suggests that any goal we set outside of 90 days is too far beyond our “horizon line.” In other words, the further out we try to envision a potential outcome, the blurrier it appears – the less we feel connected we feel to it – the less inclined we are to take action towards it. This has immediate implications for any marketer. Cause the further out we need to future pace an outcome for our prospects – the more “out of focus” and out of reach it will feel.

But to counteract that phenomenon, it’s not enough to simply shorten the timeline of the buyer’s experience to what they’ll get to experience in the next 90 days.

We also need to be strategic about which outcomes we choose to future pace.

To do that, we lean on the research of Stanford Professor and behavior expert BJ Fogg, whose concept of “easy wins” suggests this:

For people to be motivated to continue pursuing any action, they need to experience a set of immediate and observable wins.

Not just the low hanging fruit…

But the lowest, juiciest, most immediately satiating fruit.

The combination of both is what I call the “Quickest, Valuable Win” (QVW).

Want a few examples? Happy to oblige.

The QVW for a driver who’s run out of of gas isn’t a full tank of premium quadruple grade nitro…

… but a few drops of WETF will get them off the right shoulder of the freeway.

The QVW for a 40-year-old tech entrepreneur who’s going to the chiropractor to fix an achy back ISN’T being able to do cartwheels on her front lawn – but the quick little spinal adjustment that will allow her to sit for more than 2 hours a day to do her most important work.

Here’s how the QVW played out for our signature program, Copy School:

Copy School includes 3 FULL courses and close to 100 video lessons, with the ultimate goal of turning you into a world-class conversion copywriter with the chops to parlay your skillset into premium rates or high-paying in house gig.

But what about right now?

What about the quickest, most valuable win that you can achieve this weekend while life is still pretty much the same?

For that, we led with the library of 29+ templates, any of which could be written in about 30 mins and cover your ROI on the spot (selling your own product or writing for a client) in a single weekend.

Quick? Check.

Valuable? Check.

Win? Check.

So the question you need to answer is this:

What’s the quickest, most valuable win your prospect can gain from using a certain feature of your product?

Or… flipping that around, what’s the most painful wound you can patch up in minutes?

And while you ponder that, let’s move on to your third trigger…

Conversion Trigger 3: Binary Choice (and how my step dad became my step dad)

In 1997, when my mom and now stepfather were 3 years into their relationship, she finally gave him the world’s oldest ultimatum.

“Are you in or are you out?”

A few months later, they were trading nuptials and stomping on wine glasses, essentially putting an end to the world’s longest nurturing sequence.

Cute story, you say, but what does this have to do with bumping up my “final minute” profits?

If you’ve implemented the first 2 parts of this post, then…

… you’ve made the decision feel safe (MVC)

… you’ve made the outcome feel palpable and imminent (QVW)

… and in doing so, you’ve earned the right to get hyper binary.

Yes or no with absolutely zero in between.

Remember, most leads who fail to convert do so NOT because they’ve said “no” but because they’ve said nothing at all. Sales teams estimate that approx 60% of all lost sales are lost to “no decision.” Not to the competition. Not to the cheapest kid on the block. But to no decision whatsoever.

They abdicated their responsibility to act.

They let your cheesy countdown timer hit zero before shrugging their shoulders and saying “whoops, guess I missed it.”

The greatest culprit to your conversions isn’t a “no.” It’s the absence of a decision altogether.

So when the time is right – that is, after you’ve engaged your leads, presented the problem, positioned your offer and given them multiple chances to take you up on it… aka the last hours of your promotion or launch – you no longer need to dance around the issue. Stop dancing. Start closing with real questions that require real answers. And with real statements that require real reactions.

So how do you do it?

Nothing ninja about it.

Don’t throw more sales arguments against the wall to see what sticks.

Instead, position against indecision. Literally call it out. And give your prospect a binary choice, with clear stakes and outcomes for each divergent path.

Because examples help clear this idea up and make it more likely to stick the next time you write an email, here’s how a recent 10x Launches student executed the “binary choice” in his cart-closing-soon launch email. Take a sec to read and see what he’s doing:

Bonus Trigger: Give a damn (and don’t write until you feel like absolute sh*t)

So you know how, back in the day, salespeople were told to “smile on the phone” cause the person on the other end could supposedly “hear it.”

Ya, I used to think that was a bunch of BS too.

Until I realized that my highest converting emails were the ones in which I brought myself to feel the pain as deeply as my prospect would.

As if I was right there in the eye of the hurricane with them.

Desperate to solve the problem as if it were my own life or death situation.

Here’s what I’m getting at…

FOMO shouldn’t just be the thing you ask your prospect to feel in the final minutes before your offer or promotion expires. It should be something you feel on behalf of them when you sense their opportunity to overcome a pain or solve a problem quickly slipping away.

There’s no template or swipe file for this last one.

But if you expect your prospect to give a damn about your expiring cart…

Might not be a bad idea for you to take the lead.

Your subscribers want you do to this next

These triggers are just a few of the ways you can “coach the conversion” in the final 48 hours of any drip campaign, product launch or evergreen funnel.

If you’re feeling good about  sprinkling these triggers in your “final day” emails, by all means… skip “go” and dive straight into your email software so that you can start profiting ASAP.

But if you want to get a new stack of high-converting sales emails written fast.

And I mean… fast…

(by leaning on 25+ high-converting email templates)…

We just pulled our TWO best selling email copywriting programs out of the vault and joined them at the hip to form our craziest training bundle yet.

You can get it here until this Friday

~ry

Featured image by Florian Klauer on Unsplash

The post 3 little-known conversion triggers to Jack Up Sales in the final 48 hours of your email campaign appeared first on Copywriting For Start-ups And Marketers.

from SEO Tips https://copyhackers.com/2017/08/conversion-triggers-email-campaign/

[eelgibbortech-blog]

(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});

48 hrs left…

24 hrs left…

12 hrs left… I’m about to close it!

8 hrs… you’re REALLY gonna miss out

4 hrs… I SWEAR I’m not effing around this time.

2 hrs… this might be your last chance ever!

10 min…. LAST CHANCE… do it now or you’re a terrible human.

Welcome to the final 48 hours of pretty much every launch, funnel or email marketing campaign on the internet…

Where the countdown timers work overtime.

Where online marketers get more dramatic than Nic Cage in a direct-to-Netflix disaster flick.

And where the urgency and scarcity get spread on thicker than the Nutella on a diabetic’s breakfast sandwich.

You don’t feel good sending those.

Your prospects feel worse getting’em.

And the only reason you still order the Mailchimp monkey to fire them off at your subscribers is cause you’ve been tricked into thinking they’re the best way to maximize revenue in the final hours of your email campaign.

Those last-chance cart-closing don’t-miss-out emails are a necessary evil, right?

Not so fast. Truth bomb time. In the last 48 hours of your promotion:

You’re not actually “selling urgency”…

Yes, yes…

I hear you, dear marketer.

And I’ve read Cialdini’s Influence as many times as you have.

But I’ve also spent the last half-decade engineering 7-figure product launches for world-class coaches, course creators and respectable business leaders who wouldn’t dare let their closing emails look like a K-Mart liquidation bin.

And after helping generate tens of millions of dollars in “final day” revenue for peeps like Amy Porterfield, Todd Herman, London Real and others….

Here’s what I’ve realized.

Urgency is NOT the most powerful thing you should be “pushing” in the final hours of a sales campaign.

Instead, your job is to trigger a far more subtle and powerful precursor that empowers your prospect to say “yes.”

How do you do it?

By “coaching decisiveness” in your email

That’s right.

Decisiveness.

It’s a lesson I learnt when I hired my first business coach, Marc.

I was three days out of the stroke ward, dead broke from my previous 30K/year agency gig, and sitting in the middle of a doughnut shop when my soon-to-be biz coach asked:

“Here’s the investment. Are you to ready to commit to 3 months of one-to-one coaching?”

There was no “deleting” him from existence (legally).

No shoving him to a chrome tab.

No retreating to the safe confines of a funny cat meme.

Just Marc.

My soon-to-be food stamp reality.

And a decision that had to be made.

He didn’t threaten to “close the door” or spontaneously combust if I didn’t make a decision in 15 seconds. Instead, he coached me into a decision I felt confident enough to make.

And therein lies the secret.

If you take a closer look at why 1-on-1 selling boasts a 10X close rate over your overly dramatic “the sky is falling” emails…

…you might just tap into a much more powerful, authentic and value-giving way of leading your prospects beyond their resistance, and into your checkout process.

Obviously there’s a level of responsiveness and adaptability that CAN’t be replicated at scale… no matter how ninja you get with your behavioral triggers and automations. But if you extract a few of the more powerful (and repeatable) principles at play. You can start making profitable strides in bridging the 10x gap between the 2-5% conversion rate your closing emails are probably getting you…

… and the 20-50% that the world’s top enrollment specialists get to brag about.

Ready to make this practical?

Want to see how you can take your next campaign (or an existing evergreen sequence) and coach decisiveness in the final minutes to boost profits?

Here are 3 Conversion Triggers I use to “Coach The Conversion” and Boost Sales in the Final Hours of Every Email Campaign

Get a free launch email template and tutorial here

Conversion Trigger #1: Minimum Viable Commitment

“I only want you joining my super expensive program if you’re 110% committed”

“Tire kickers can go screw themselves”

“You have to be willing to invest 18 months, your first born child, and your vintage rock t-shirt collection”

Holy commitment batman.

Marketers have this pesky habit of either setting the commitment bar ridiculously high… or non-existently low (looking at you SaaS trials).

Problem is, if humans only took action when they were 110% certain, there’d be like 6 married people in the world – with 5 of them being pre-arranged.

When you ask for 110% commitment, you’re going against billions of years of neural wiring.

What feels safer?

“I know we just met, but let’s hitch a ride to Vegas and get married now.”

Or…

“I like where this is going. Let’s test things out. If they continue to go well, we’ll keep doing them for as long as it feels right.”

Buying your product shouldn’t feel like a “massive step” forward.

It should feel like a natural step forward, propelled by the momentum generated through your previous interactions.

Where to use Minimum Viable Commitment?

MVC feels most at home In your CTA’s and your risk reversals.

Here’s how we plugged it into the “Perfect for You If” closing email template that we used in our February launch of Copy School. Have a read:

What do you see?

First, actually, let’s talk about what you don’t see.

You don’t see “you need to drop everything in your life to make this work.” And you don’t see the copy creating absurd, unrealistic expectations.

What you DO see is a quick display of empathy around our prospect’s current mental/emotional struggle. What you DO see is a stress-free invite to give things a shot.

On a more subtle note, this allows you to take potential objections like “being unable to dive in for a few weeks” and make that INCLUSIVE in what makes a perfect buyer. When you do this, you set the bar just high enough so that your prospect feels good about their ability to clear it. Yet low enough that they can still make the jump even if they have a 10 pound bowling ball of resistance shackled to their feet.

So try this formula in one of your closing emails:

Maybe you’re [time or value objection]

Maybe you’re [unsure of being a fit objection]

Either way, you totally appreciate having [guarantee length] to put [Product] to the test to see if you can [achieve most desired outcome or overcome most crippling pain]

Oh… and a note about the so-called “tire kickers.”

Stop procrasti-shaming them.

The hyper-committed bought the second you said “go.”

If you’re down to the final 48 hours of your promotion, chances are good that all you have left are the “tire kickers.”

Don’t kick them out of the car lot.

Give them an ice pack for their swollen feet, and show them why driving is more fun than kicking a tire or two.

Conversion Trigger #2: The Quickest, Most Valuable Win  (QVW)

Ya… ya…

I know your product or service can do some pretty uh-mazing things when used to its full capacity.

The problem is, for many products, the “big win” or “ultimate outcome” won’t come for weeks, months or even years.

aka…when your prospect’s changed their hairstyle, gone keto, and barely recognizes themselves in the mirror.

aka… a reality which is EXTREMELY difficult for them to project themselves into no matter how many senses you engage in your expert level “future pace”.

So how do you get around this?

How do you get your prospects excited about an imminent outcome that they can actually see themselves being an active participant in through your product?

I introduce to you, the QVW (Quickest Valuable Win)

This is a concept I developed as the love child between two brilliant thought leaders.

The first one being world-class performance coach, Todd Herman who suggests that any goal we set outside of 90 days is too far beyond our “horizon line.” In other words, the further out we try to envision a potential outcome, the blurrier it appears – the less we feel connected we feel to it – the less inclined we are to take action towards it. This has immediate implications for any marketer. Cause the further out we need to future pace an outcome for our prospects – the more “out of focus” and out of reach it will feel.

But to counteract that phenomenon, it’s not enough to simply shorten the timeline of the buyer’s experience to what they’ll get to experience in the next 90 days.

We also need to be strategic about which outcomes we choose to future pace.

To do that, we lean on the research of Stanford Professor and behavior expert BJ Fogg, whose concept of “easy wins” suggests this:

For people to be motivated to continue pursuing any action, they need to experience a set of immediate and observable wins.

Not just the low hanging fruit…

But the lowest, juiciest, most immediately satiating fruit.

The combination of both is what I call the “Quickest, Valuable Win” (QVW).

Want a few examples? Happy to oblige.

The QVW for a driver who’s run out of of gas isn’t a full tank of premium quadruple grade nitro…

… but a few drops of WETF will get them off the right shoulder of the freeway.

The QVW for a 40-year-old tech entrepreneur who’s going to the chiropractor to fix an achy back ISN’T being able to do cartwheels on her front lawn – but the quick little spinal adjustment that will allow her to sit for more than 2 hours a day to do her most important work.

Here’s how the QVW played out for our signature program, Copy School:

Copy School includes 3 FULL courses and close to 100 video lessons, with the ultimate goal of turning you into a world-class conversion copywriter with the chops to parlay your skillset into premium rates or high-paying in house gig.

But what about right now?

What about the quickest, most valuable win that you can achieve this weekend while life is still pretty much the same?

For that, we led with the library of 29+ templates, any of which could be written in about 30 mins and cover your ROI on the spot (selling your own product or writing for a client) in a single weekend.

Quick? Check.

Valuable? Check.

Win? Check.

So the question you need to answer is this:

What’s the quickest, most valuable win your prospect can gain from using a certain feature of your product?

Or… flipping that around, what’s the most painful wound you can patch up in minutes?

And while you ponder that, let’s move on to your third trigger…

Conversion Trigger 3: Binary Choice (and how my step dad became my step dad)

In 1997, when my mom and now stepfather were 3 years into their relationship, she finally gave him the world’s oldest ultimatum.

“Are you in or are you out?”

A few months later, they were trading nuptials and stomping on wine glasses, essentially putting an end to the world’s longest nurturing sequence.

Cute story, you say, but what does this have to do with bumping up my “final minute” profits?

If you’ve implemented the first 2 parts of this post, then…

… you’ve made the decision feel safe (MVC)

… you’ve made the outcome feel palpable and imminent (QVW)

… and in doing so, you’ve earned the right to get hyper binary.

Yes or no with absolutely zero in between.

Remember, most leads who fail to convert do so NOT because they’ve said “no” but because they’ve said nothing at all. Sales teams estimate that approx 60% of all lost sales are lost to “no decision.” Not to the competition. Not to the cheapest kid on the block. But to no decision whatsoever.

They abdicated their responsibility to act.

They let your cheesy countdown timer hit zero before shrugging their shoulders and saying “whoops, guess I missed it.”

The greatest culprit to your conversions isn’t a “no.” It’s the absence of a decision altogether.

So when the time is right – that is, after you’ve engaged your leads, presented the problem, positioned your offer and given them multiple chances to take you up on it… aka the last hours of your promotion or launch – you no longer need to dance around the issue. Stop dancing. Start closing with real questions that require real answers. And with real statements that require real reactions.

So how do you do it?

Nothing ninja about it.

Don’t throw more sales arguments against the wall to see what sticks.

Instead, position against indecision. Literally call it out. And give your prospect a binary choice, with clear stakes and outcomes for each divergent path.

Because examples help clear this idea up and make it more likely to stick the next time you write an email, here’s how a recent 10x Launches student executed the “binary choice” in his cart-closing-soon launch email. Take a sec to read and see what he’s doing:

Bonus Trigger: Give a damn (and don’t write until you feel like absolute sh*t)

So you know how, back in the day, salespeople were told to “smile on the phone” cause the person on the other end could supposedly “hear it.”

Ya, I used to think that was a bunch of BS too.

Until I realized that my highest converting emails were the ones in which I brought myself to feel the pain as deeply as my prospect would.

As if I was right there in the eye of the hurricane with them.

Desperate to solve the problem as if it were my own life or death situation.

Here’s what I’m getting at…

FOMO shouldn’t just be the thing you ask your prospect to feel in the final minutes before your offer or promotion expires. It should be something you feel on behalf of them when you sense their opportunity to overcome a pain or solve a problem quickly slipping away.

There’s no template or swipe file for this last one.

But if you expect your prospect to give a damn about your expiring cart…

Might not be a bad idea for you to take the lead.

Your subscribers want you do to this next

These triggers are just a few of the ways you can “coach the conversion” in the final 48 hours of any drip campaign, product launch or evergreen funnel.

If you’re feeling good about  sprinkling these triggers in your “final day” emails, by all means… skip “go” and dive straight into your email software so that you can start profiting ASAP.

But if you want to get a new stack of high-converting sales emails written fast.

And I mean… fast…

(by leaning on 25+ high-converting email templates)…

We just pulled our TWO best selling email copywriting programs out of the vault and joined them at the hip to form our craziest training bundle yet.

You can get it here until this Friday

~ry

Featured image by Florian Klauer on Unsplash

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