Episode 146: Looking At Lopsided Relationship Dynamics

How couples fall into relational imbalance

I am fascinated by patterns of relating that we fall into in relationship especially with the passing of time. Some of these patterns promote intimacy, closeness and desire.

Others patterns, if left unattended over time, can leave our relationship vulnerable. We can be in a relationship and yet feel frustrated, lonely and unsupported.

In this episode, we look at how couples can slowly fall into the trap of being overly focused in one area of relational life (eg: career) and expecting our partner will cover off the other areas (eg: keeping up with family commitments). It is wonderful to work as a team and be responsible for different areas if that is agreed upon. However when this tips into becoming, for example, overly responsible at work and yet having no idea about the day to day running of the family home then we may have taken things too far. This means that consequences are likely to start appearing over time such as feeling like an outsider in your own home.

Episode 145: Observing Anxiety Dynamics In Relationship

Challenging automatic responses to create healthier relating

When anxiety rises in the relationship, each person’s automatic anxiety management patterns start to get easier to see.

One member of the relationship starts to go into fix-it mode and the other starts to shut down.

Perhaps instead of talking to each other about the present points of friction, we start to complain to third parties. It may become so predictable that you already know who your partner will go to first to complain about you to. On the flip side, they probably know who your first go-to person is to.

If we have children together then we may find that to distract from the growing distance and tension we become overly involved in our children's lives.

This episode looks at some of these autopilot patterns for the purpose of giving us more clarity and control in continuing to work towards healthier relating.

This episode draws from some Bowen Family Systems theory and in particular Bowen Family Systems author Roberta M. Gilbert. I would certainly recommend her work when seeking to have a better understanding of the patterns that drive our relationships and family system.

Episode 144: Looking At Types of Self Abandonment

Providing self-support when we have been taught the opposite

There are many ways in which we can give ourselves away and not provide adequate self-support. We are human and compassion for self is required when exploring this area of life.

What did I learn from my family system about choosing togetherness and the temporary approval of others at the expense of my self-approval? This has significant ramifications in both our professional and personal lives.

In this episode, we look at a couple of self-abandonment categories, namely emotional self-abandonment, financial self-abandonment and physical self-abandonment. What did we learn in these areas both directly and indirectly from our families in these areas?

Gaining insight into how our past family system experience isn't for the purpose of blame but rather to allow us to more readily choose how we want to take control of our lives going forward. How much and how well am I actually showing up in my own life, rather than just following a bunch of scripted rules and expectations I picked up in childhood?

May you have every success and joy in your life journey!

Episode 143: Emotional Affairs and Relationship Neglect

Prioritising sharing with our partner to avoid threatening the relationship

When we first get into a relationship the conversational exchanges can be highly invigorating, fascinating and rewarding! Over time, however, they can become less so, if we don't continue to make them a priority.

We can benefit from meaningful exchanges with multiple others so that the burden of our emotional well being is not placed squarely in the hands of our partner. However, if we begin to find that conversations of significance are progressively being had with a person or persons other than our partner, then this could be a red flag.

Am I continuing to make time to share with my partner things that are significant to me and continuing to invite them to share with me? So many distractions, social media and vigorous workplace exchange can over time make me neglectful of remaining present to my relationship. This episode looks at this topic and what we can do to avoid accidentally putting our relationship under threat.

Episode 142: Feeling Like You Are A Parent To Your Partner

What we can do to avoid patterns of unhealthy relating

There are a number of dysfunctional relating patterns that we can fall into over time in our romantic relationships. These patterns lower desire and build frustration and resentment.

Some examples of adults falling into a parent to child style of relating are the Peter Pan and Wendy Syndrome and/or what's known as paying your partner's mummy or daddy bill.

I want a partner who meets all my needs without me having to do much. I want a partner that heals all the wounding of my childhood. I want someone to look after me so that I don't have to be burdened by the job.

Choosing to become part of a couple means that whilst you hold onto a healthy sense of separateness, you also agree to contribute to the ‘us’ and togetherness side of the relationship. This means compromise and willingly shouldering some responsibility.

This episode looks at some of the parent/child like rut that we can fall into and the way it can erode healthy vibrant adult to adult relating.

Episode 141: Time Audit & Planning Misperception

Conducting a time audit to improve your quality of life

We spend so much time in our lives but rarely allocate space to specifically observe how we are using our time. Time is a non-renewable resource so how it is spent can become very significant and precious.

However, it is easy to slip into habits, get lost on the internet or have time simply seem to vanish on us. Conducting an audit may help us to become aware of small adjustments that could yield big returns to our life quality.

This episode also looks at the misperception that in the future you'll have more time. The habits, perceptions and structure you have around time at present are more than likely going to be the same unless you make some adjustments. Unless you refine your relationship with life in your present set of circumstances, going forward and achieving more can actually lead to you feeling more time pressure and not less.

Episode 140: Do What I Tell You So That I Can Feel Better

How to self-regulate instead of trying to control others

Depending on the type of family system we grew up in, one of the things we learned was that telling others what to do was the way to feel less anxious. When you behave and think as I want you to then I can feel ok.

This episode looks at the belief that we can control the way others think, feel and behave. Sometimes it works but rudely people then start thinking for themselves again! I want the people around me to be confident and free-thinking as long as your expressions of confidence are sanctioned by me and meet with my approval.

The closer I am to you the more likely your behaviour will become anxiety-producing to me from time to time.

So we can try our luck and turn ourselves inside out shaping others or we can begin by first assessing our reactiveness.

It is my job to regulate me. Once I have assessed and gained insight into what my reaction is evoking in me, I can proceed with greater calmness and clarity. I imagine that this would maximise my chances of success in promoting the most healthy and genuine relational experiences, going forward.

Episode 139: When Taking Care of Everyone Else Means You Miss Out

Learning self love & the difference between healthy & unhealthy care

Growing up some of us learned that the way to seek love, validation and approval was to give, give, give. We may have even gotten really skilled at anticipating and meeting the needs of others before they themselves even became aware of what they needed.

Over fixation on others can lead to resentment and exhaustion in us especially as we wait in vain for someone to give to us. When is it your turn? It can get so imbalanced that we can become uncomfortable with receiving. We get so skilled at looking after everyone else that when it comes to meeting our own needs and wants we can end up drawing a blank or feeling guilty.

This episode looks at healthy and unhealthy care, as well as how we can begin to focus on loving ourselves, approving of ourselves instead of chasing after others all the time in the off chance that we will get some crumbs of love and appreciation.

Episode 138: Intimate Relationship With No Intimacy

Prioritising intimacy for emotional nourishment

At first, it's as if we can't get enough of one another. Can't spend enough time together, can listen to our partner speak for hours, crave their touch and attention. However, the allure of our cherished one and their mutual fascination on us starts to drop away with the demands of life.

If we aren't mindful we start to have less and less moments where we feel seen, known and heard by our partner. Eventually, we can be in a relationship and yet feel alone.

This episode looks at the importance of continuing to make intimate exchange a priority in a world of multiple demands so that our relationship remains a place of ongoing love and emotional nourishment.

Episode 137: Dealing With An Emotionally Overwhelming Family

Managing emotional overreacting learnt from our families

Families can be intense and sometimes overreact emotionally to certain situations that present themselves. When we grow up in emotionally intense families we can experience family members becoming highly anxious about our life choices.

Emotional outbursts, uninvited advice-giving, ridicule and talking behind other family members backs about them can end up being the order of the day. 

The emotional education we directly or indirectly received in our childhoods can have a huge influence on our present-day adult relationships and even affect our professional environments.

This episode looks at some of the tools we may need to help us have more fulfilling adult relationships and manage emotional overreacting in ourselves and others more effectively.

Episode 136: Family Roles & Family Anxiety

How family roles affect our personal & professional lives

Our family system has its own way of dealing with issues of intimacy and anxiety. One of the ways in which we find our place in our family system is to take on roles.

These roles have unhealthy and healthy expressions. They can serve to keep the family enmeshed and family anxiety suppressed.  The more challenged or dysfunctional the family, the more fixed the roles can get. Someone in the family may get cast as the troubled, messed up one whilst a sibling becomes the golden child. 

These roles, although they feel quite comfortable at times, can interfere with our ability to truly be ourselves around our family. In turn, what we learn in our family of origin we then can play out in our intimate adult relationships and professional lives.

Episode 135: How To Deal With Family Guilt

Standing up for self while remaining connected

In family systems that are too enmeshed any stand one makes for self even if it is perfectly reasonable can trigger anxiety in the family system. 

One way in which you can be pushed back into the fold, so to speak, is to be guilted back into behaving like everyone else again. What do you mean you're not coming to dinner? Everyone else will be there! Mom will be so disappointed! Don't you think about others?

Learning how to make a stand for self in a healthy mature way, whilst remaining connected is one of the most vital skills we can develop. Learning the difference between the things we are genuinely guilty over compared to triggered guilt that serves the family enmeshment is essential for self-clarity.

Episode 134: Keeping The Standards Up In Relationship

The importance of standards in supporting long term relationships

I don't know about anyone else, but the fairy tales that I heard as a child tended to promise that after the initial barriers to love were beaten, it was happy ever after! I thought all you had to do was find your soul mate and the rest would be easy! 

The reality is somewhat different and it turns out that if you want your relationship to continue to be meaningful, some expectations of effort need to be still met.

When a couple hasn't had discussions about expectations and standards in a relationship that are measurable, it is easy to lose our way. Setting agreed-upon standards, committing to those standards and regular check-ins can really be vital to staying together in a meaningful way.

This episode explores the value of standards in supporting, long term healthy relating.

Episode 133: Risk Taking and Informed Confidence

Understanding the relationship between confidence and educated risk-taking

When I'm feeling more confident then I will take on the world! Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work as well that way. As a person who likes to find the easiest way out, no one is more disappointed than me about this.

Genuine, informed confidence comes from engaging in the world, braving to risk even if that means facing temporary failure. Through taking risks and succeeding my confidence in myself and my abilities grows.

Through taking risks and falling short but working out how to move through that, my confidence grows. Action both informs and refines. As a result, my confidence grows but also has substance behind it.

This episode looks at the relationship between building confidence and educated risk-taking. How can I stack the deck in my favour? 

Episode 132: Managing Personal Limitations That Prevent Success

How to work with limitations for greater success

I find it so interesting how many successful people have managed to turn adversity and their own self-limitations into something that works for them or that they can work around.

We all have areas of life or aspects of our personalities that we see as not up to par. The relationship and strategies that we utilise to address where we feel weak can be the difference between getting where we wish to go and falling short.

In this episode, we explore this topic and some ways to integrate our limitations so that we can have greater success in life, love and business.

Episode 131: Avoiding Success Traps

How do we get in our own way of staying at the top?

It is one thing to get to the top of your chosen profession and a whole other ball game to stay there.

The majority of individuals who reach their chosen idea of success might make it, but very few actually sustain that level.

This episode looks at some of the pitfalls that can get in the way of staying at the top. How do we get in our own way? What can we do to ensure that what we have built is sustained?

Episode 130: Developing Your Specific Success Fundamentals

The fundamentals of doing well in life

With every idea of success, you can generally find individuals who have employed different strategies to get to the same place. The great thing about books and the internet is they provide us with so much information and so many ways to get where you want to go. The downside of having the internet and thousands of books on success is that they provide us with so many ways to get where we want to go.

This episode looks at some of the fundamentals that seem to appear more often than not in how people do well at life. For example: More often than not people have had a mentor or mentors along the way. More often than not people have gotten further in life by having the right people around them personally and professionally.

This episode explores some of these elements and offers some areas of focus to help you achieve your goals in a best-fit way for you.

Episode 129: Money Conversations In Relationship

How to make money talks a source of joy rather than pain

Money issues are one of the largest points of friction for couples. This episode looks at some of the things that can be implemented to make money more a source of joy than pain in our relationships.

Couples can clash over a number of factors around money but one, in particular, is around its allocation and spending choices. Do we save or do we splash out on a holiday?

Being able to schedule consistent, open and focused discussions on money issues in your relationship without it ending in a massive blow-up is vital to long term relationship health and survival.

This episode looks at some of the areas that if attended to in advance can help to avoid emotion-fueled clashes.

Episode 128: Knowing When It Is Enough

Letting go of perfection to enjoy our achievements

Sometimes the messages we received about success in our childhood feed into our drives as an adult.

Am I succeeding for me or because it is what I believe others have wanted for me?

Messages like "Be Perfect!", "Mistakes aren't tolerated!" and other such versions of these mean that we can be driven to excel past levels that actually return sufficient joy. 

It can be important to reflect on the sometimes crippling downside of perfect, so that we can ease up on ourselves and actually enjoy life and what we have accomplished in it.

Episode 127: Low Conscience Individuals & Exploiting Vulnerability

How low conscious individuals use vulnerability to their advantage

A small aspect of the population who aren't bothered by guilt, shame and remorse in the ways that most of us are, seek relationships of self opportunity and exploitation.

Many of these individuals thrive just below the line of detection and have worked hard to get their exploitation game refined. There are many elements to these challenging individuals and the way they approach life.

This episode looks at how they seek vulnerability as a doorway to move into our lives and businesses for their own purposes. This may be through detecting or eliciting emotional vulnerability or through situational vulnerability where life circumstances have left us exposed in some way.

There are many amazing people working and studying in the area of Low Conscience Individuals but I wanted to acknowledge in particular Sandra Brown and Jennifier Young who have written the excellent book 'Women who love Psychopaths". I hope you find this episode informative.