If you’re making excuses for how someone treats you, read them back like they’re about your best friend.

Standards slip quietly when you are the one inside the situation. You know the context, the history, the reason it happened this time, and all that context works like padding around something that would otherwise be obvious. Put the same words in a friend’s mouth and the padding falls away, because you have no reason to protect anyone.

Write down, in one sentence, what you have been explaining away. Then read it as if a friend had sent it to you and ask what you would say back. Your answer to them is usually the answer you have been avoiding.