Episode 109 - Untangling Relationships
Episode 109 - Untangling Relationships
This week on the Seasons of Joy Podcast, I am talking about untangling our relationships. No matter the relationship, when we can learn the steps of untangling we can create greater connection and intimacy in our relationships.
Listen to learn how!
Resources:
30 Ways to Self-Soothe by Marty Nemo Ph.D. in Psychology Today
Harvard Adult Development Study
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I am so excited to announce that I am expanding my practice to include couples coaching. This is an amazing opportunity for couples that are looking to strengthen their relationships. I am offering a couples coaching package of (5) 55-minute sessions for $150 for a limited time. While we work together, I will help show you how to create greater connection in your relationship. Whether you are engaged, newly married, or seasoned partners, you can learn ways to deepen your relationships. If you are interested, you can schedule a free clarity call with me where we can see if this is a good fit for you.
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Transcription:
Hello, my friends!
Welcome to the podcast! I am so glad that you are here.
I want to remind you that if you are struggling with the unique challenges that come with being in the midseason of life, I would love to be your coach. Whether it is the relationship with yourself, with your spouse, with your adult child, with your co-worker, or with your best friend, I invite you to schedule a Clarity Call with me to learn more about how to create desired change in your life. Just visit my website www.seasons-coaching.com and click on the “Work with Me” tab at the top of the page you will find a link to schedule a free Clarity call with me to see what it would be like working with me. You can also find the link in the show notes as well. On this free 55-minute call, we can see if this is a good fit for you.
If you are tired of:
✖️Feeling confused about your purpose
✖️Feeling disconnected from yourself and others
✖️Trying to control everything outside of you in order to feel better
I've got you!
I became a certified faith-based life coach specializing in helping women of faith in the midseason of life create a life they love.
If you are ready to:
✔️Find your purpose in this season of life
✔️Create greater connection in your relationships
✔️Free yourself by learning how to manage yourself
I’ve got you!
Again, just visit my website www.seasons-coaching.com and click on the “Work with Me” tab at the top of the page you will find a link to schedule a free Clarity call with me to see what it would be like working with me and you can also find the link in the show notes as well.
Now on to this week’s episode.
When people are struggling in their relationship, oftentimes they are so tangled up they don’t know where they end and the other person begins. This is especially true in marriage relationships and parental relationships. It can be a big jumble of thoughts, emotions, and behaviors and they are usually blaming each other for anything negative they experience.
As you begin to learn to untangle, you can increase connection and intimacy with yourself and with the other people in your life.
So how do you begin to untangle your relationships?
The first step is working on yourself through greater self-awareness and owning your experiences. It means taking responsibility for your own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. This is what the CTFAR self-coaching model helps with and I have covered it many times on this podcast. You can go back and listen to episode 5 of this podcast to learn more about it. But essentially it is this. We have the world outside of us. Things and people we cannot control. We also have the world inside of us which is our interpretations of the things happening outside of us or our thoughts which create the way we feel or emotions which fuel our actions or behaviors which ultimately create our life experiences.
I invite you to imagine that drawer in your house that is full of junk. Half of what is in there you may never use or you may have even forgotten what is even in there. Overtime, this drawer becomes a big wadded mess. When you begin to sort that drawer out, you pull things out and take a good look at them. As you are sorting items, you ask yourself if you use that certain thing, or if you like that thing, or if it even still works. You decide on those things you want to keep and those things you want to get rid of.
This is similar to the work of untangling. You begin the untangling process by exploring the stories you are telling yourself and then question what is in your mental and emotional junk drawer.
You can ask questions like:
What belongs to me and what doesn’t?
What am I willing to let go of?
What am I willing to change my thoughts about?
What is worth standing up for?
When you do this in your relationships, it isn’t about deciding on whose fault it is. Fault finding only moves you into the dance of blame and shame or Finding the Bad Guy–believing it’s either someone else’s fault or shaming yourself. Also, the need to be right only creates disconnection from others and in the relationship we have with ourselves.
When we can learn to handle conflict well, we actually create greater connection in our relationships. Conflict really is part of the human experience and if we can learn to handle it from a healthy place we can grow closer in our relationships. I really believe that conflict in our relationships can provide a healthy pressure to the growth we can experience individually and in our relationships.
But before we start digging in our mental and emotional junk drawer, we need to create a sense or feeling of safety. If we don’t feel safe, we move into our survival mode, we disconnect, and our mind races. This prevents us from being intentional. When we are sensing danger, real or perceived, we may explode or withdraw. When we are feeling psychologically unsafe, we may unconsciously do things to try and feel better but that actually don’t help us untangle at all.
In learning how to untangle our relationships, we must first learn how to soothe ourselves and regulate our emotions.
If we don’t know how to do this in a healthy way, we may do things like:
Busy ourselves so much that we don’t allow time to feel our emotions.
Use external things to buffer in order to feel better.
Over analyze or over think our emotions.
Blames others.
Take on the emotions of others and make them our own.
Unintentionally turn and experience our emotions as physical symptoms.
We harm ourselves by not learning how to process or regulate our emotions. Emotions are there for a reason. They are truth tellers and can act as our inner compass.
You can learn a lot by asking yourself:
“What emotion am I feeling?”
“Why am I feeling it?”
“What is this emotion telling me?”
Taking the time to answer these questions will give you an opportunity to slow down and take care of yourself so that you can live more authentically and intentionally.
When we take the time to process and learn from our emotions, we are able to stay calm, not over-react, and be engaged in our relationships which in turn creates greater connection and intimacy.
But what do you do when you are activated and flooded with emotions? When this happens, it is important to know how to soothe and ground yourself. This includes using visualization and your senses to help you return to the present moment and establish a sense of safety.
You may already have some methods that you use. I am going to include a resource I found that gives 30 different suggestions. However, I am just going to share 3 that I use in those moments when I am experiencing a flood of emotions and need to ground myself.
Breathe Deeply. One of the easiest ways for me is to breathe deeply. I often put my hand on my heart and then I slowly inhale and exhale. Sometimes, I think or say “in” and “out” with each breath. I feel the air fill my lungs and pay attention to how it feels as I exhale.
A Short Walk. Another way I like to regulate myself is to take a short walk. This can include concentrating on my steps and even counting them. Sometimes, I pay attention to the rhythm of my steps or how it feels to place my feet on the ground and lift them up.
Self-Kindness. Another way I like to regulate and soothe myself is through self-kindness. This includes repeating kind and compassionate phrases to myself. Sometimes, I say them outloud and other times I say them in my head. I repeat them as many times as I need. Phrases such as:
“This is just a rough moment, but it will be okay.”
“You are a strong and capable woman. You will get through this.”
“You are doing your best and that is enough.”
I invite you to explore ways to soothe yourself in those moments and keep them in your back pocket for when you need them. Remember, safety is felt in the body. So, when you can self-soothe and regulate your emotions, you'll be better equipped to navigate conflict in your relationship.
So, after you have created safety for yourself, the next step in untangling is to self-confront. This means you take a good look in a magnifying mirror with all the lights turned on. I don’t know about you, but that can be uncomfortable and even painful. However, this is the kind of pain that leads to the type of growth required to live a life of integrity. This type of growth fosters intimate relationships.
Self-confrontation must be done from a place of safety not from a place of shaming yourself into being better. Safety allows you to step out of the dance Blame and Shame. It helps you focus on cleaning up your side of the street which is the only thing you really have control of. It includes taking responsibility for how you respond and the system or dance of disconnection in your relationship you have created. Yet, it is all done from a place of honest kindness.
When self-confronting, you ask yourself questions like:
How am I showing up in this relationship?
Is it the way I want to show up?
How am I contributing to the problems?
Am I willing to show up as the best version of myself no matter what the other person is doing?
Do I over function or underfunction in this relationship or what is the relationship system I have helped create?
Am I open to input from the other person?
What is it like to be in a relationship with me?
These questions allow you to discover your role in your relationship system or dance. Again, it isn’t about shaming yourself. It is about being honest with yourself from a place of kindness and compassion.
We all have reasons for why we show up in our relationships the way we do. However, when we slow down and get curious about what is ours to own, we can begin cleaning up our side of the street.
After we have created safety for ourselves by soothing and regulating our emotions, and we have self-confronted, what is next in untangling?
It is learning how to make room for both of you in the relationship. Healthy relationships make room for both people to show up authentically. When relationships are in distress, it’s often because they have set up their relationship as a zero sum game. This means one person loses and one person wins, every time. Over time, the relationship begins to deteriorate. Making room for both of you doesn’t mean merging into one person, but rather holding onto yourself and allowing space for the other person. This is essential to untangling and in creating healthy connections.
Relationships matter! We are wired to connect with others. I have spoken about this on other episodes before. The connections we have with others are important to our overall health and well-being. There are studies that have been done that show the effects of loneliness on our physical, emotional, and mental well-being. I would also add our spiritual well-being.
However, when we can think relationally, we are better able to look for ways to show love for everyone in the story. We allow others to be themselves while at the same time creating healthy boundaries for ourselves. Brené Brown says, “The most compassionate people have the best boundaries.”
I teach that the connection we feel or the quality of relationship we have with others comes from the way we think about them. This also includes what Brené Brown teaches. If we believe that we are seen, heard, and valued; that we can give and receive without judgment; and that we gain strength and sustenance from the relationship, we will feel connection.
So what does it look like to make room for both of you?
Each person gets to be themselves
Letting go of expectations
Make requests for collaboration - boundaries and agreements
Living in integrity
Healthy pressure - growth happens in conflict
Compassion for self and spouse at the same time as you come to better know yourself and your partner in the growth that comes
So those are three steps of becoming untangled or the how of cleaning out your relationship junk drawer.
Safety. Create psychological safety by self-soothing and grounding yourself so you can regulate your emotions.
Self-Confrontation. Take responsibility for how you respond and the system of relationship or the dance you have created from a place of honest kindness.
Make Room for the Both of You. Allow others to be themselves while at the same time creating healthy boundaries for yourself.
These steps help you strengthen the connection and intimacy in not only your relationship with your partner but the other people in your life such as your adult child or best friend.
I can honestly say that as I continue to practice regulating my emotions, being honest with myself from a place of kindness, and letting other people be who they are while creating healthy boundaries for myself, I am so much happier in my life and relationships. More often than not, I am able to be the creator of a life I love while showing up as who I want to be in my relationships with others.
For years, we have heard about the importance of a balanced diet, regular exercise, and favorable genetics as foundations of a long, healthy life. However, insights from the most extended study on longevity reveal that the quality of our relationships holds equal, if not more, significance. Let me say that again. The quality of our relationships holds equal, if not more, significance to diet, exercise, and genetics.. The Harvard Study of Adult Development has made a compelling case that deep, meaningful connections with others play a crucial role in our overall happiness and health as we age, surpassing the influence of wealth, fame, or even physical health markers like cholesterol levels.
The research emphasizes a profound truth: our relationships serve as a buffer, safeguarding our physical and emotional well-being. It's as if the bonds we forge with others weave a protective layer around us, delaying the onset of age-related illnesses and extending our lifespan. This protective mechanism is thought to be linked to the way our relationships help us manage stress. When faced with life's inevitable challenges, having a partner to confide in or a friend to call can physically soothe us, mitigating the detrimental effects of stress and time on our bodies.
The study further shows that the spectrum of beneficial relationships is broad, including not just intimate partnerships or close friendships but also positive interactions in our daily lives, such as those with colleagues or even brief exchanges with strangers, like a store cashier. These moments of connection contribute to our sense of well-being. Essentially, having someone in our corner, whom we trust and rely on, is invaluable. Beyond this, every positive interaction, no matter how small, adds a sprinkle of joy to our lives, reinforcing the idea that our social connections are a fundamental part of living a longer, happier life.
The time you spend on strengthening your relationships in your life pays off big time! We do this the best when we untangle our relationships.
If you are ready to take your relationships to the next level, I would love to be your coach. Remember, you can book a free Clarity Call with me to learn more about how we can work together.
Thank you for being here. Remember, you are amazing and have a joyful week!
