Chapter Six: Relationships Part one: Emotional Healing & Growth Through Relationships

 Without question, this two-part section of the series will change your outlook on how to operate within the relationship you have with others, but more importantly how you look at the relationship that you have with yourself. You cannot possibly love another until you love yourself, and so with that being said the first part to this session deals more with having a loving relationship with yourself. The second part of this session is about how you then move onto having a loving relationship with another.

Transcript

Chapter Six

Relationships

Part 1: Emotional Healing and Growth through Relationships

Positive affirmation: Love and respect is currency in relationships. The more we pour into our relationships, the more value they contain.

If successful, our relationships can offer us some of our greatest joys and a great deal of personal growth. If we have problems in our relationships, however, they can cause our deepest pains. But our struggles with them can give us a point of focus to direct our self-reflection. In this chapter, we are going to talk about how relationships can bring up our emotions and can force us to take a deeper look at ourselves. 

Three Things Relationships Have Taught Me

1. They have made me aware of what triggers my emotions. Knowing my triggers helps me know the source of my problems as well as what motivates me.
2. They have helped me know how to control my emotions and respond with gentleness.
3. They have helped me to see a connectedness between myself and others.

Triggers and Patterns

A trigger is something that suddenly causes you to feel an emotion or access a memory. Intimate relationships can be great instigators of triggers, but they can also create some of your deepest wounds that are difficult to heal. 

Identifying your triggers and patterns can be a very liberating experience. Sometimes you may not know what triggers you; all you know is that you are angry, shut down, or even suddenly taken over with anxiety. Knowing the triggers that disempower you provides great insight into yourself. Once you can identify a trigger, you can trace back to where you have been hurt. Then, from a safe place, you can heal that experience and continue to move forward without leaving part of yourself stuck in the past. 

            Often there are patterns to our triggers, and these same patterns show up in each relationship we have. Think of any difficulties you have had with intimate relationships, friends and family, or in the workplace. Is there a common theme among any of them? 

One of the steps to moving away from your triggers and healing your relationship with the past is to bring acceptance to the situation or trauma you are healing. Once you see a pattern, you can start the process of healing the source of it. For example, if you have been pushed away by several people, rejection may be a trigger for you. Look back to the first time you felt rejected. Did a childhood friend end their friendship with you, or did one of your siblings or parents reject you? 

How to Identify Your Triggers

Your needs can sometimes be what trigger you. Here are some examples of how to identify some of your triggers. Fill in the blanks space with the appropriate word or words from the list below each sentence.

Ask yourself: “I need to be _________.”

Accepted, Respected, Liked, Understood, Needed, Valued, In Control, Right, Treated Fairly, Given Attention, Comforted, Included, Challenged

Ask yourself: “I require__________.”

Freedom, Quiet Time, Balance, Consistency, Order, Love, Safety, Predictability, Change.

There can be a great deal of trapped emotion around the traumatic events in your life. Acceptance may be how you start to move away from your traumatic experiences. Acceptance does not mean that the other person was right to cause you harm. It means that, even though you did not like what happened, it did happen and you have acknowledged it and decided to move forward. Acceptance marks the willingness to start moving your way out of a traumatic event from your past. It is like mentally drawing a line in the sand and then stepping over it. Everything behind the line is now your past. You now have a distinct marker to move forward from. If you are finding it hard to even make the first step to acceptance, look for what you can start to accept in the situation. Then gradually move that acceptance to cover the entire event.

For years, I was haunted by a difficult relationship from my childhood. I could not seem to make any real progress healing it, and this person would come to my mind almost daily. I despised this person for all the repeatedly awful things they did to me, but I tried for years to forgive them. Even when I thought that I had finally forgiven them, though, I really had not. Under the surface, I was still angry. I just could not seem to find my way to forgiveness. 

Then one day it dawned on me. How could I forgive this person when I could not accept what they had done? By inserting acceptance into the situation, I stopped the flow of anger. This was my first step toward forgiveness. Each time I noticed my anger with the situation, I had to move back into acceptance and stop the stream of angry thoughts I was projecting.

If you struggle with someone or something, make your healing about you and only you. Never place anything in front of your peace. This means that you learn to be okay and peaceful regardless of what other people say or do. You do not require the world to be at peace for you to be surrendered to yours. If you wait for others to join you in your healing, you may never get the resolve you are looking for. Remember, your peace is not attained. You surrender to it within yourself.

Six Steps to Healing

1. Make a list of all the things that move you away from your peace. What makes you sad, angry, frustrated, et cetera?

2. Once you have your list, look for common trends or patterns.

3. Bring acceptance into what is on your list. If you find this hard to do, start with applying acceptance to a small portion of what you want to heal. It may start with the acceptance that the event happened. This does not make it right, but it helps create movement. Allow yourself to become vulnerable with yourself. Your freedom may be sitting just outside your comfort zone. 

4. Once you have accepted what causes you to struggle, your willingness to let it go happens more effortlessly. Letting go can be hard if you have made the opposite choice for many years of your life. In that case, letting go may need to be something that you keep doing from one moment to the next.

5. The next step is to send love to the entire event or person. Imagine love flowing from your heart and surrounding the situation or people involved.

6. Finally, imagine that you are hugging yourself and bring back that part of you that is stuck in the past. Bring yourself from the past back with you into this present moment. Do this last step with your eyes closed to turn this tool into a healing visualization; it can be very effective.

Healing our wounds can take time and the process can stir up a lot of emotion. Do not try to force yourself to heal. It is important to go at your own pace. The key is to love yourself during the process. Every step you make is a small victory.

 Link to picture
https://umatter.ca/2021/02/02/chapter-six-relationships-part-one-emotional-healing-growth-through-relationships/

Regulating Emotions

Understanding your emotions and learning how to master them is one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself and the people in all your relationships. When you overreact, responding to your emotions can be very tiring for the person on the receiving end. Who really enjoys adult temper tantrums? Conversely, if you underreact and have no emotions, this can be problematic as well. 

There are many situations that call for a response. When your partner has exciting news to share, they want you to be happy for and with them. If they are going through a difficult time, a compassionate approach from you would be important. Either way, your emotions are an important part of communicating with your partner. Proper communication helps you support your partner’s emotional needs.

Emotional intelligence (EI) is the capability of individuals to recognize their own and other people’s emotions. It allows them to discern between different feelings and label them appropriately. We use emotional information to guide thinking and behaviour and manage and/or adjust emotions to adapt environments or achieve goals. 

Emotional Intelligence plays a huge role in your ability to regulate emotions and respond in an appropriate manner. Being able to flow between the banks of high and low emotions gives you power over stressful events in your life. For example, your emotional response to having a flat tire while you are driving to work is entirely up to you. One person will perceive and respond with no emotion, while another person could respond by getting angry. They could even stay angry all day, causing undue drama to other situations. You are solely responsible for how you react to life. By not allowing your emotions to control you and owning your reactions, you create a healthier balance in your emotions.

You can let go of emotions in the same way you learned how to let go of your thoughts. Much like your thoughts, emotions may not be real, true, or yours. You could be misreading what you feel at times or you could be feeling someone else’s emotions. It is not mandatory to react to every feeling that arises in you. Just because you feel something does not mean you are required to be a slave to that feeling. By learning to pay attention to your feelings, you can choose how you respond to them. Each time you watch a feeling and stop yourself from feeling it, you change your relationship to it. By just watching feelings come and then fade away, you burn up the energy they contain. Be patient and willing to keep applying this technique each time you notice your emotions taking over. It is important not to give up on the process. The mind has a way of creeping in to smear negativity on things. 

When an emotion arises that you are trying to let go of, be sure to let go of the self-talk around it. You only strengthen your emotions when you immediately begin to talk to yourself about them as they arise. 

Labelling Emotions

One day I woke up feeling angry. I was not sure why nor did I have a reason to feel that way. My anger persisted all morning and then, while I was driving to work, I decided to share with my wife what I was feeling. I told her I did not know what was wrong with me, but I just felt all this anger inside. When I told her about this, a story came to mind about an old friend of mine:

As a young boy, my friend was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and was told he would never be able to get rid of it and would need to be on medication for the rest of his life. Halfway through a six-month meditation retreat, he ran out of his anxiety medication. He knew this was going to happen, but he hoped that, by that point, he would be better and would not need his medication. But in the middle of one of his days, he suddenly felt his anxiety come on and started to have a panic attack. He knew what was happening, so he went straight to his teacher and demanded that he be brought into town to see a doctor to refill his prescription. 

His teacher asked if he would sit with him for a few minutes before they left for town, but my friend’s anxiety was getting worse and he insisted that it was an emergency and that he had to go right away. Again his teacher asked him to do an exercise before they left. Reluctantly, to appease his teacher, my friend agreed so that he could get going. His teacher asked him to remove the label from what he was feeling. Then the teacher asked him to put all his attention onto what he was experiencing in that moment, without any labels or judgements. He told my friend to just be a silent witness to what he was experiencing. 

After a few minutes, the teacher asked my friend if he was sure what he was feeling was anxiety. In total shock and amazement, my friend suddenly began to cry. He realized that he was not feeling anxiety at all. What he was feeling was intense joy and bliss. All his life he had been told that what he was feeling was anxiety and it was a bad thing. Without ever knowing the difference, he continued to believe his diagnosis until that day when his teacher stopped him, brought him into the present moment, and removed the label from his feelings.

On my drive to work that day, when I was feeling so angry and remembered this story about my friend, I decided to let go of the label that I placed on my feelings. I told my wife I was going to change the label to a neutral one. Instead of saying I was angry, I said I was feeling a lot of energy in me. As soon as I removed the label of anger, I noticed I instantly felt different. I had been struggling all morning with the feeling of anger and frustration and, within five minutes of removing the label, it was gone.

Layers of Emotion

Often, emotions are layered. What you initially feel may not be the entire truth. Your first emotion may be a partial truth, but when you look a bit closer, you discover a deeper and more honest feeling that offers greater insight into what you are really feeling. Like your thoughts, you sometimes get told what to feel about situations. If you are angry, you may be told to calm down right away. In other situations that upset you, you may be directed to stop crying. Just because someone else does not feel the way you do, that does not mean that you are not justified in having your own feelings. 

In my past, I can only recall two emotions: I was either happy or mad. During my trip from childhood to adulthood, I blocked out most of my feelings between happiness and anger. There were several contributing factors for this. I was a guy and there are gender roles to follow. Men do not cry and we are taught to be strong no matter what. This is not true. Being able to access your emotions is a valuable tool. Your emotions help you read people and situations in order to respond appropriately. They also can point to what you need to heal in yourself. If you are holding trauma from your past, your emotions will be your first indicator. By looking at what is hiding beneath the layers of your emotions, you can get to the bottom of why you feel the way you do. This, in turn, will help you become more empowered and less controlled by your emotions. 

This type of work is only necessary until you bring your emotions into a healthy balance. Once this is achieved, it need only be a tool you use from time to time. Take some time and dissect your layers of emotion. Make a list of some of your strong emotions. Now look at each one and ask yourself: “Is this emotion true? Do I really feel this way?” 

You can also apply this in the moment when you have a strong emotion rise up for you. Doing this will help you learn more about yourself. Once you have this information, you will be better equipped to avoid being trapped by the same emotion in the future.

 Link to picture 
https://umatter.ca/2021/02/02/chapter-six-relationships-part-one-emotional-healing-growth-through-relationships/

The Danger of Emotions

When your emotions get too far out of balance, you may experience an emotional hijacking. This occurs when your limbic area (the area of the brain that regulates emotions) goes into overdrive. This causes restricted access to logical cognitive faculties. According to Daniel Goleman in his book, Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ, during an emotional hijacking, your amygdala, which is in the limbic area of your brain, shuts down your frontal cortices. Knowing this when you begin to feel overwhelmed by your emotions helps you tell yourself that it’s important to breathe and refrain from speaking. Once you have calmed down, you can then respond to the situation with greater ease and logic. This simple and practical advice can be a valuable tool when you feel a temper tantrum coming on inside your mind. Just know in that moment during an emotional hijacking that your logical cognitive resources are cut off and you may regret your words or actions.

         In my past I was quick to anger and slow to cool. I found it challenging to strike a balance. People close to me found it hard to talk with me because if I did not like what I was hearing, I would become very defensive and angry. Learning how to listen without falling into my emotions was a massive obstacle for me to overcome. Over time, though, I learned how to soften my approach in relationships. Finding equilibrium happened for me when I became genuine, loving, respectful, and caring for myself and then others. The difference was that I became willing to come from truth rather than passivity or anger. 

Because relationships evoke some of your deepest emotions, ranging from extremely positive to the extremely negative, they will continue to be great teachers with your emotional self. If your emotions rule your life, your relationships tend to feel the brunt of this unbalance. Once you master your emotions by rising above them, you can move into a different domain of relationships—one where you now have clarity to rise above your wounds and not to fall prey to other people’s traumas. 

What Are Relationships About?

Relationships are about engagement. An authentic engagement requires that you respond in diverse ways. How you engage with the world and others can tell you a lot about yourself. They call for you to express yourself and to listen to others. In a successful relationship, both people are authentic and real. You are willing to openly share what you feel, see, and hear, and you must be open to a willingness to receive the same. 

From the emotional aspect of relationships, they have the potential to show your strengths and weaknesses, so they can serve as a self-mastery tool. Take some time to look at your relationships. Are you a leader amongst your friends, or do you prefer to support and follow along? What type of friends or partners do you attract? Look at their strengths and weaknesses. You might find similarities in yourself. 

Use your relationships to become a better communicator. Openly share with your family, friends, and partner. If you are feeling frustrated, try to gather more information. This will lead to more harmonious relationships. Since assumptions can create deep struggles in your relationships, effective communication dispels a great many assumptions. Be quick to notice if your mind is making up stories. Before you get mad or frustrated with your partner or friends, find out if your thoughts are valid. 

Use what you learn from your relationships with others to build a more loving relationship with yourself, for the relationship you are having with yourself is one you have to spend a great deal of time with. It is just as important to be kind and loving with yourself as you are with others, and by doing so you then can drop a little deeper into relationships. Beyond your struggles in relations with others there lies a deeper truth, one that moves you into empowerment. This deeper truth is that at the heart of your struggles with another, you find yourself looking back. Many of your struggles with other people are really a problem you have with yourself. Take some time to reflect on where you can find yourself in the issues you are having with another. 

Finding Unity in Your Relationships

When you clear away your wounds, the spirit of unity between you and another is more likely to be discovered. When you see that oneness in another, you then discover the greater purpose of relationships. When two people can gaze into each other’s eyes and speak to one another’s souls instead of banging their egos together, they are able to catch a glimpse of the unity between them. There is no longer a need to struggle back and forth, projecting traumas and dramas onto each other. 

Joining together with another can serve a much greater purpose when both individuals have cleared themselves of their desire to play ego tug of war. We can join our energies to collectively seam together our potential power as one entity. Our human potential is amplified exponentially by joining together as one.

Unity is already in place and completely intact. It is not something that you need to create. It’s something you embrace. All you need to do to experience it is love others, the world, and yourself. Begin to look for your similarities in another because, by doing so, you just might discover the spirit of unity. Even if you are the only person in your community who is coming from a place of love and willingness to spark unity with others, you make a difference. You open the door for more meaningful relationships to unfold in your life. You not only affect your life, but you affect every person you meet.

Tools to Deepen Your Experience of This Chapter

1.     Make a list of all the things that move you away from your peace. What makes you sad, angry, frustrated, et cetera? Once you have your list, look for common trends.

2.     Trace the origin of your triggers. When was the first time you were triggered? Try to trace it back as far as you can go.

3.     Work with the six steps to healing. Steps 3, 4, and 5 may take a bit of time and effort on your part. Take as much time as you need to work with the steps.

4.     How are you at communicating with your partner? One thing you could do is ask your partner how they rate your communication skills. Be open to their response if you ask. This exercise could open up a very useful dialogue for your relationship

5.     Be aware when your emotions arise and practice letting go of the feeling of your emotions.

6.     Take some time to look at all the relationships you have. Are there any similarities among them all?