Danielle Jhiani shares five ways to handle relationship arguments better: treat disagreements as chances to express needs, focus on solutions instead of blame, remember you're partners not opponents, set a time to reconnect if your partner shuts down, and agree to discuss issues once or twice then move forward.
Foreign.
Welcome back. My name is Danielle Thornton Chiani. I'm an anxiety and OCD recovery coach, helping people have happy, healthy relationships and lives free from anxiety and ocd, just like I have. If you struggle with arguments with your partner, this video is for you. I'm going to give you five tips to work through arguments in your relationships a lot easier. Number one, I want you to remind yourself that arguments in relationships are very normal. Everybody has them. Some relationships have more than others depending on the two people in them, but they are a normal part of relationships for everybody. I don't want you to look at arguments as a bad thing necessarily. Like I say, with triggers, OCD and anxiety, you can use them as an opportunity versus making them something negative. Arguments can be an opportunity to express and bring up our needs or our boundaries in a relationship. Maybe some of your old stuff is coming up from past relationships or past issues growing up that you need to recognize and start to sift through and not bring into your current relationship. Maybe you just need to work through that stuff on your own or with a specialist or coach. Arguments are opportunities that need to be addressed either personally and individually or with your partner. So I want you to start recognizing them as normal and look at them as opportunities instead of negatives in your relationship. You're likely in a very long term relationship or marriage to have a couple of things that don't ever resolve themselves. Just because we have an argument doesn't mean we're always going to come to the perfect conclusion. For both of us. A lot of acceptance and then working together is going to be really important. Number two, don't focus on the situation or the argument itself. I want you to focus on that solution. When you can focus on the solution versus the argument itself, it takes the pressure and the focus off of a mistake that somebody made or a feeling that you had and it puts it on how to eliminate this type of argument going forward. Maybe this was an opportunity and you were able to bring up a need or a boundary that you had. Maybe you were able to express something that you hadn't been able to express for a while or you opened up. Maybe you recognize something in yourself that's being triggered that really has nothing to do with your partner but has to do with a fear or something that happened in your past that you're projecting onto your partner. In that case, the solution may be more in you than it is in your relationship and through this disagreement that you had, you were able to recognize that this is an opportunity for both of you to Express what's going on for you and to bring you together and help you move towards solutions versus focusing on what isn't going right. Number three, remember that you are in a partnership. You are two individual people coming together to develop a relationship. And through that time, there's going to be disagreements. You may never see things the same way, but a lot of times when we're upset about something, we are stuck in our own thoughts and our own emotions, and we forget that this is a partnership or a relationship with two people. So when you can remember that this is a relationship with two people in it, you can focus on those solutions that are going to work for both of you. You're likely not going to get 100% of what you want. You're going to come together with your partner to find a solution that works for both of you. Sometimes that may be that your partner admits that, yeah, I messed up here, I could do better, I'm going to work on that, and that's great. But sometimes it's going to be a compromise between the two of you on how to move forward again, strengthening your relationship going forward. Number four, if your partner is stonewalling you or they are shutting down, it's time for you to create boundaries about what arguments will look like in the future. So if your partner tends to shut down and give you the silent treatment, or not reach out or not talk to you for long periods of time, then it's time to have a conversation with your partner about when we have a disagreement. I need you to let me know that you're gonna reach out to me in X amount of time that we're gonna be able to talk at this period of time so I can work through my stuff. And I know that we're gonna be able to come together to resolve this versus shutting down and not communicating at all, which is not fair or healthy for a relationship. Agree to something that works for both of you, but ask that person, give you a time frame either with every argument or maybe each time that they get upset and they want to talk, they ask for an hour or two of space to process. This allows you to understand that there's a certain time period that you two will get back together, communicate, find a resolution together. Number five, if your partner gets anxious and they feel the need for certainty and reassurance, and they tend to rehash things over and over again, the solution here is also boundaries. Letting your partner know that, I'm perfectly fine with talking about this or communicating about this, but we're gonna do this once, maybe twice at the most, and then after that it's time to move on. Now this is per situation, so if you have a particular topic that continues to come up in different situations, then yeah, you may need to still communicate about it. But if your partner is bringing up the same situation, after you've had a conversation, after you've allowed each other to communicate and you've heard each other and validated each other's feelings and then found a solution, you should be able to move on from that. If there's one other thought or thing that comes up for your partner, it's okay, talk about that. But beyond that, that person needs to be able to manage their own anxieties and uncertainties, not continue to come back to get reassurance about that after you've dealt with it in a healthy way. They may need somebody to help them to do this, to work through these thoughts and feelings, and that's okay. They can reach out to somebody like myself or another coach or therapist to help them do this, and that's going to help a lot with them not needing so much reassurance or to rehash things with you. I hope this was helpful. Please comment, like and subscribe to this channel. We'll talk to you very soon.
