Revealing the Influence of the Past on Relationship Skills

Foreign. I'd like to welcome everybody today's presentation. This is part three of Interpersonal Skills. Today we're going to be talking about how the past impacts our present relationships, specifically thinking about past relationships, including but not limited to that ever important primary attachment relationship. I am your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. We are going to identify signs of relationship insecurities, explore how past relationships impact the present ones and idea. Identify at least five interventions to help people address relationship insecurities. You're going to see some of these interventions and you're going to go, yeah, no, that doesn't hit for me or don't think it would be great with my clients and hopefully other interventions that will hit the mark a little bit better. Feel free to modify them as much as possible. But I'm just trying to give you some ideas of out of the box activities that you can use to help clients apply what they're learning and learn in a more sensory oriented, kinesthetic kind of way. Let's start out with signs of relationship insecurities. Most people don't come to counseling and say, hey, my relationships are going great, life is wonderful, yada yada. They come especially if they're coming to talk about relationships or you know, I've worked for, you know, about two decades in substance abuse and there's often a lot of relationship issues in those relationships. So we want to really look at what does that look like. How do we know that it's not just, you know, a Warden June Cleaver sort of scenario? Well, it's probably pretty obvious, but when you have difficulty trusting your partner, when you find yourself regularly comparing yourself to your partner's exes or random people in the community, or likewise comparing your partner to all of your exes and thinking, well, you know, this person's okay, but they don't measure up quite as good as Jim Bob from, you know, five years ago, that's signs that there may be some problems in the relationship. If you require frequent reassurance that you are enough, or your partner requires frequent reassurance that they are enough, then that indicates that there may be trouble brewing because one of you or both of you feel insecure. If there's anxiety when you're separated, if one of the partners internalizes negative thoughts and creates self fulfilling prophecies like, you know, this person is way out of my league, they are going to leave me. When you tell yourself that enough, then you may create a self fulfilling prophecy. Or if you say, well, this person drinks just like my ex drank, which means they're gonna start having problems with alcohol and become an alcoholic, and it's going to be a bad relationship. Well, they may not become an alcoholic, but if you're so concerned that they're going to follow in somebody else's footsteps, you may end up creating problems in the relationship because the person feels hounded and judged because they are recreationally drinking. If there's a feeling of distance or detachment, remember, I think it was Thursday we talked about. In healthy relationships, there is a sense of connection and commitment. And if one of you or both of you read negative into everything the other one says or most things that the other one says, then that may be an indication that there are insecurities that you are. Are feeling like you have to be on guard for being judged or, you know, something else. So any of these things, I think any of these things, if you were experiencing them in your relationships, you might think to yourself, this is not an ideal situation. But why? Where is it coming from? Is it that person? Is it me? Is it fate? What is causing most of my relationships to have problems? A lot of times our past relationships, including our primary attachment relationship, our friendships, as well as our romantic relationships, may cause us to build walls around our heart to protect ourself. If we feel like we have been wronged in some way, we may hold people in our present life hostage for what others did wrong or didn't do right. And let's. Last week I talked about carrying baggage. And each relationship we have carries along with it its own amount of baggage. No relationship is perfect now. Some bags are really light. You unpack them. You just don't worry about them. Other bags are really heavy. And when you get into the new relationship, you take that baggage from the old relationship and you give it to your new partner and say, here, carry this. You know you're going to be responsible for everything this other person left behind. And that's not fair. And it also creates problems in understanding what's going on in the current relationship. So holding people hostage for what others did wrong or did not do right, you could be in a relationship with somebody and wish that they did all these things, whatever all those things are, and that person doesn't do it. So you may hold future relationships hostage, thinking, if I get into this relationship, this next person is going to have to make up for or fulfill all those gaps, those inadequacies of my prior relationships. We need to recognize that, again, no relationship is perfect and expecting, you know, the Disney Prince and Princess castle scenario probably is not going to Ever totally exist. Recognizing that people are going to do the best they can with the tools they have at any given time is really important. Holding people hostage by expecting them to live in the shadow of a prior idealized relationship. So we can take negative stuff from old relationships and put it on our current relationship, but we can also take positive things and this comes up a lot when one partner often says things like, well, so and so always did this or so and so never did that. And it makes the current partner feel inadequate or judged. We don't want to hold our current relationships accountable or hostage for our prior relationships. We can learn a lot from our prior relationships. What we don't like, what we need, what we want, what we don't want in a relationship. And that's cool. That goes to increasing self awareness about what we need in relationships and about ourselves. However, you know, it's important that we recognize that likely no person is going to meet all of our criteria all of the time. And it's important to be compassionate and caring and compromising and all those other things. We talked about one activity that you can do, and this is one of my foundation activities that I like to do because it is more kinesthetic. I have people write the name of their prior relationships on bricks. Yes, actual bricks. And we put masking tape on them. So I reuse the bricks every time because I can't get a lot of bricks. But we take those bricks and put them in a backpack. Every person carries a backpack with the bricks of their prior relationships with them. We go on a nature walk for about 15 minutes, not super long because a lot of people's backpacks are pretty daggum heavy. They don't just have one or two bricks in it. When we get back, I asked my clients about all of the things that they noticed on the walk and how carrying that heavy backpack kept them from being mindful about what they were seeing and what they were doing and what they were smelling and hearing and all those things because they were too busy carrying that big old backpack. And then you can move on to talk about how carrying the weight of those prior relationships keeps people from being present and aware of what's going on in their current relationship. If you're so worried about thinking, well, you know, Jim Bob, we're going to use Jim Bob as our present relationship. Jim Bob is doing this. And it reminds me of when these past people did things. Then you're not focusing on the totality of the current situation. Jim Bob is drinking. Okay, well, a lot of people Drink responsibly and don't have a problem with alcoholism. Recognizing and looking at the big picture. Not just that, the fact that Jim Bob is drinking, but is Jim Bob drinking and having problems, or is Jim Bob drinking responsibly? So. So looking and being mindful of the present moment and the whole situation that's going on. In unhealthy relationships, we often see characteristics like chaos. This can be romantic relationships, friendships, primary attachments, you know, any relationship, if there is chaos, abuse and neglect. And remember, neglect is just not paying attention, ignoring, assuming that person is going to be there, or not giving the person the time they need. For children, you know, neglect is very obvious when the children aren't getting fed, when they're not getting bathed, when they're not getting to school, when, you know, they're not getting their basic needs met. As adults, we are able to get our basic needs met on our own. However, neglect comes through in terms of, in. In relationships with. When each partner is not paying attention to the relationship, they're taking the relationship for granted. It can start to become neglectful when both partners are like ships passing in the night and don't even hardly connect anymore. There's disconnection when there's boundary violations. When partners assume they know what's going on, they do participate in mind reading. They expect others to read their minds, or they try to read their partner's mind, and so they know what that person is thinking. That's a boundary violation. But also just bounce. All of those other boundary violations that we talked about, physical boundary violations, going through your significant other's personal property, reading their diary, reading their email, you know, those are environmental type violations, violating their physical boundaries. Obviously that's really, you know, obvious when it happens, as opposed to some of the others that are a little bit more subtle. But there are a lot of boundary violations that can occur in a relationship, and it causes distrust, it causes anxiety, it causes insecurity. Invalidation is another characteristic of unhealthy relationships. If your partner is always telling you you're wrong or you're mistaken, then that can have significant negative impacts. Role reversals. Now, this is more for the parent child dynamic in an unhealthy relationship. In a healthy adult relationship, there is, you know, some flexibility in roles, but particularly in parent child relationships, if the child has to be parent because the parent is not able to function, then that is very devastating to a child who relies on the adult to take care of them. Appearance is everything. And this is not just about physical appearance. This is about the way our relationship looks to the rest of the world, the way I look to the rest of the world is everything. If you've got a problem with me, then that's fine, but you better smile out in public and we can talk about it when we get home. There is a element there, you know, this is where we talk about continuums. You don't want to call people out in public and, and you know, yell at them or have an argument in public. If you have something constructively critical to say, you, you do want to say it in private. But this goes beyond that. This goes to making sure that everybody knows or everybody thinks, thinks that it's perfect. So what happens, the impacts of this? Low self esteem and feeling inadequate despite best efforts to appease in prior relationships. If you've done your, you know, God's honest very best and it never seemed to be good enough, that could be a sign of a poor relationship because that person was always holding you to this other standard, you know, this imaginary standard, this ideal that they wanted you to reach and you just never could do it. So that really erodes your self esteem over time. Lack of emotional boundaries if your boundaries are always or regularly being violated. Remember in the addicted family we talk about the mantra of don't talk, don't trust and don't feel well. The addicted family is one of those examples of a very unhealthy relationship dynamic. There are no emotional boundaries. You are. One person controls and expects the other person to react the way they want them to. If I get angry about something, I expect you to be angry about it. If I'm having a bad day, you better not be laughing and giggling and carrying on and you know, empathize with me and get down into the depths with me. That's not healthy, you know, for us. I mean, think about it as clinicians, if we didn't have emotional boundaries, how exhausted and depressed and anxious and just dysphoric we would be at the end of the day if we had to feel 247 the way our clients feel. You know, I have, I'm working with clients right now who have a lot of anxiety about, you know, COVID 19 and other things related with quarantine. And I get that. You know, I can empathize with them and I can be present with them, empathize in the moment, but I can also separate and recognize where my feelings are and where their feelings, my feelings end and their feelings begin. When one partner feels responsible for the other person's happiness, we all want to make other People in our life happy. Nothing wrong with that. We're talking again about extremes. If I am going to do whatever it takes to make you happy, I will, you know, all the time. If I don't make you happy, I'm afraid you're going to leave me. So it's important for me to, to make sure that you're happy. People who grow up in borderline families or families with someone with borderline characteristics, not even necessarily full blown BPD often really hone in on this one. Because when you're growing up in a family where, and I will say addicted to, when one or more people either has borderline personality disorder characteristics or, or addiction characteristics or both, then those people that are symptomatic tend to turn on a dime. If you are not making them happy, if you are not doing everything right, then they may turn on you like that and suddenly be very angry and blame you for all of their unhappiness. And it's important to recognize and work through in therapy when you what is your responsibility versus what is their responsibility? We are actually not responsible for other people's happiness. We can do nice things and, you know, we can do things to try to make them happy, but if they don't want to be happy, we can't make them be happy. Difficulty trusting people and anxiety because the person was unpredictable are also characteristics in unhealthy relationships. And this can be primary relationships or friends or, or romantic relationships. If the person you were in a relationship with was untrustworthy and unpredictable, then that is going to make you potentially more hyper vigilant. Because, you know, none of us wants to get into a fight with our significant other or our friends. None of us wants to have a bad day. None of us wants to, to, you know, get criticized. So if you're in a relationship with someone who is very unpredictable, you may be much more hypervigilant to, to micro clues. Not necessarily microaggressions, but micro clues that things are going bad. You know, the way they breathe or the, the pace that, with which they walk or how heavily they walk. Anything that might give you a clue as to whether the person is in a good mood or a bad mood. But that is exhausting to be that hyper vigilant all the time. One activity that you can do is a relationships inventory. And this is one that I usually do with my individual clients or for group. I have them do it between groups. Doesn't make for a great group activity. You might be able to figure out a way to make that happen. But I couldn't. I have them write down their primary attachment relationship on. And I sometimes say relationships because this could be mom and dad or mom and grandma or, you know, dad and grandma or whomever there. Most people generally have two people that were relatively prominent in their life when they were growing up, whoever those are, and have a sheet for each person. On those sheets, identify what they learned or what they experienced in terms of consistency, attention, responsiveness, empathy and validation and solution generation. These are their characteristics. And you notice it spells out cares. These are the characteristics that are necessary to. To help children form healthy attachments. Parents are consistently there when something is wrong or something is right. The. The rules don't change, the boundaries aren't on roller skates. I've shared this with some in some other classes before. When my son was about 2 years old, we went to my grandmother's house and she had a lot of knickknacks and stuff around. It was a different environment. He'd never been there before. And he walks straight up to her television, you know, we'd been. Been there a little while. Walks straight up to her television, looks at it and looks at me and says, points to the television and says, no touch. And I said, you're right, no touch. And he looks at me and he looks at the television and he touches it and he looks back at me and he goes, time out. I said, yep, timeout. And he toddled off and sat down very nicely. He was just checking for consistency. He wanted to make sure that the rules were still the same in this environment so he knew how to behave for whatever reason. My son has always been, oh, and my daughter too. They have always wanted to please. They haven't wanted to displease. So they, they check out the rules to make sure they know what's expected. It. Consistency is important and this can also be, you know, in chores and in anything else. Attention is important. We want to give our children attention and let them know that they're loved and they do a good job and that unconditional positive regard and all that other stuff. We want to be responsive to children and this is from the time they are infants, you know, on. We want to make sure that we are responsive when they are upset. We acknowledge that and we are willing to be responsive and empathize with them and validate how they're feeling and eventually help them generate solutions. Children are not born with coping skills. Believe it or not. They. They don't come prepackaged as adults when we help form that secure attachment, when Something goes wrong and a child is struggling, they're angry, they're anxious, they don't may not know how to deal with that feeling. And it's up to the parents to be responsive to validate. So you know, say, you know, I hear that you're angry or I can see why you're angry. And then help them figure out how to generate solutions. By working through the process with them, they start to learn how to self regulate. So for the relationships inventory, they identify their two primary attachment relationships from childhood. And I know Bowlby said there was only one, but whatever the two people who are most prominent in their childhood and they do the do that worksheet in the adult relationships, they're probably going to be a lot more of those. There's going to be the romantic relationships and then significant friends, significant friendship relationships that have had an impact on them. And I want them to identify the same things. In what ways did those relationships teach you about or harm, whatever, not demonstrate consistency, attention, responsiveness, empathy, trust, honesty and commitment. So those are a little bit different. We don't necessarily need in adult relationships the solution generation part, but we do want to make sure that there is trust and honesty. And you could argue that that needs to be on the other side too. But in our adult relationships, we really start learning how to communicate and commit to someone who is not, quote, expected to be there for us because they are, you know, a blood relative. Having people do that. And each person, each relationship has a unique page associated with it. And that sort of forms the foundation for some of these next activities. Insecurities in relationships and problems in relationships often indicate anxiety or fear of being hurt or abandoned by partly from prior learning. So we talked about those baggages or those bags that the person had. This one, we're going to start talking about unpacking bags. Well, we're going to get there. We have those lists of what people learned from their prior relationships. You're going to create paper bags, or you can use plastic bags from Walmart or whatever that if you want to reuse them. But each bag relationship gets a bag. So you're going to put the sheet that you just made into a bag. You're also going to write a pros and cons list of that relationship. So that may add to what's already in the bag. But writing a pros and cons relations list for each relationship and put that in the bag, you're going to write a goodbye letter to each person or relationship dealing detailing what happened, how you felt and how it Impacted you. Obviously you're going to write goodbye letters to the unhealthy relationships, the healthy ones. You don't need to do that for. In sharing what's in the bag, people take back their power. Instead of saying, and we do a lot of work with changing semantics here. Instead of saying, you made me feel worthless or you made me feel helpless, saying I felt helpless, changing it to the you made me, and I'm giving you my power and allowing you to make me feel a certain way to being mindful and aware and saying, I felt this way because of. Instead of a narrative of abandonment and betrayal because of personal inadequacies, explore other reasons the person left the relationship or did what they did. For example, in an addicted relationship, you know, there's a lot of frustration and hurt and how could you, you know, drain your kids college account? And how could you do this and that? There's a lot of anger and betrayal that happens in there. And instead of looking at it, you know, as a. If you were a child whose parent, you know, smoked away your entire college account, instead of looking at it as this person must not love me at all, exploring it, other reasons for why the person may have done that, and coming to understand the disease of addiction and learning a little bit more, but recognizing it wasn't about you. They weren't even considering that, that they didn't even see that at that point. They were just so desperate to get their next fix. This takes time. And there's a lot of discussion around what are the other possible reasons this may have happened besides me. Sometimes part of it is me. You know, sometimes a relationship may end because of certain things I did, but. But it's also recognizing that I don't have to do those things again. You know, I recognize my part in the relationship and what I might need to change, but I also recognize that it wasn't all me. The next step is exploring forgiveness in terms of choosing not to allow that person to continue to hurt you or have your energy. If someone betrayed you, you know, five years ago and you, every time you think about them now, you still get all tied up about it. That is still activating your threat response system, your HPA axis. That's still draining your energy, that's still hurting your heart, forgiveness doesn't mean that what they did was okay. Forgiveness means saying, I am not going to allow you to have my power anymore. I am not going to allow you to affect me anymore. And it takes time. And there are a lot of activities, distress tolerance activities, mantras, that people may use thought stopping in order to address those issues of memories and baggage that are still, they're still holding on to when the people are ready. Now, so far, they have this bag, they have the lists in it, they have the letter in it, and they have talked with their therapist or their group whoops about what happened in order to take back their power and chosen to change the narrative to one of a survivor. That's all well and good, but sometimes people aren't quite ready to let go of that pain yet. When they're ready to let go of that anger and hurt and take their power back, they can take the brick out of the backpack. If you're doing it in a group, obviously each person can do one brick each session. You're not going to have somebody do 15 bricks and everybody else just sit there for the entire group. But gradually they will see how their load gets lighter. Insecurities, remember, indicate an anxiety or fear of being hurt or abandoned. It could be that they're trying to master a prior failed relationship, or they are putting, projecting, transferring onto this current person all of the sins of somebody in the past. I love Venn diagrams. We can do these in group. We can do these in individual. You create two circles. Chris is on one side, Sam is on the other. And encourage the person to identify in the middle the similarities between Chris and Sam. You know, they are both, you know, in a relationship with me. They are both accountants, they are both athletic, whatever. But then also identify the differences because, say, Sam is the current relationship. Hopefully Sam has a lot of positives that Chris may not have had. Encourage people to see the differences between prior relationships instead of assuming that all people that I get into a relationship with are going to fill in the blank. You know, that's not true. You can't say that about anybody. So you want to highlight the uniqueness of the individual. Another cause of relationship insecurities is low self esteem and a need for others to validate them. A need for somebody else to tell me that I'm okay. And if you remember the Muppets, then you know, you're old like me. But these two little guys used to sit in the balcony and heckle the Muppets throughout the entire, you know, presentation or whatever you call it. So I have those because those are the hecklers in our head. We want to silence those hecklers. Encourage people to create a collage of everything that they like about themselves. Sometimes that goes well, sometimes not. Another activity is to have them describe what a best friend would look like Know what characteristics would they have, what would they do? What do they look for in a best friend? And then I have them turn talk about why those characteristics are important, you know, and they're like, you know, these are all the reasons. And that would be such an awesome person to be in a friend, be in a friendship with. And then I have them turn it back around and I say, okay, how many of those characteristics do you have right now? Oh, well, that's a bit of a different story. A lot of times they recognize that they have a lot more to offer than they really give themselves credit for. You can do the values activity where you identify the five values that you want to be known for or the five values that you think are important and explore how you embody those values now. And another one that's a little creative is to encourage people to sell themselves. You know, create an advertising campaign. If they were going to try to, you know, get a job somewhere and they needed to sell themselves in order to get this job, well, this job is going to be a relationship. So why would you want to be in a relationship with me and create this whole ad campaign? It can have jingles in it, you know, whatever. I encourage people to get as creative as possible possible with trying to sell themselves. This can be a really fun activity to do in small groups. You know, groups of three work out really well and people get together and they work on one person at a time because then the person that they're working on, say Sam, is the, the campaign they're working on. But Jane and Tom are also putting in ideas about things that Sam has to offer that are great. So Sam is getting some input from other people. And then, you know, you move around the circle and the whole group works together on everybody's campaign. That can be really fun as well. And then they get up and they present it to the group just like you would do in an advertising campaign. It tends to be something that produces a lot of happiness. People may have difficulty developing self esteem based on a pathological inner critic. It is important to teach the skills of thought stopping. You know, how do you thought stop those thoughts from coming? For me, I just say, no, not going to think about it right now. I've even been known to start singing a song or counting the ABCs or something. So my mind is focusing on something else. Whatever it takes. But don't just tell people that they need to practice thought stopping. Well, that sounds great, but how do you do that? And you know, the primary example, think about kids when they're little and they don't want to hear what you have to say. What do they do? They put their fingers in their ears and they go, la, la la la la la la la la. Well, that's an example of thought stopping. They don't want to hear it. The same thing is true when you're an adult. Now, I'm not advocating for being in the middle of Walmart or something and doing that, but you can mentally do that or turn your attention to something else. Handling hecklers, encouraging people to recognize where their thoughts are coming from and explore whether they believe what they're telling themselves. Like, you're never going to be good enough. Okay, well, where did that come from? Who did you learn that from? Who's that heckler that is stuck in the back of your head? Because things people tell us when we're younger, you kind of interject those people into the back of your head and they stay in the balcony and heckle you until you dispute them, until you kick them out of the theater. It's important to handle hecklers. If somebody told you something when you were younger or made you feel a certain way in the past, it is really, really important to be able to figure out how to address that issue. You know, typically if we just ignore it, they're going to hang back there in the gallery. We need to actively dispute it, validate in the present, and check for accuracy. If you have a pathological inner critic who's saying, you are never going to be good enough. Well, let's check for accuracy. You know, is that statement accurate? Have I always failed at everything? Well, probably not. So we want to check some of those cognitive distortions, too. What you're telling yourself about yourself, and also what you're telling yourself about the relationship. If you have this pathological inner critic that is saying, well, he's going to cheat on you or. Or she's going to leave you. Okay, well, you learn that from somewhere. You know, you have that critic in your head, and it's important to explore in the present. How accurate is that? What signs do I have that this person in this relationship right now is unhappy, is going to leave me, is going to repeat the behaviors of people in my past, and finally embrace imperfection and synergy. Encourage people to recognize that, yeah, you're not going to be the perfect person for your friend or your partner 100% of the time, most likely. And they aren't going to be the perfect person for you 100% of the time, most likely. That's okay. That's where we embrace imperfection. We recognize that everybody makes mistakes. I encourage them to think about their best friend and think, you know, have they ever made a mistake? Have they ever, you know, done something that made you really angry? And generally the answer is yes. And then I come back to the fact of. But they're still your best friend, aren't they? Well, yeah. Okay, so they made a mistake and you were willing to forgive them. You were willing to accept that they weren't perfect. Do you think that that holds true the other way around? Do you think that they're willing to accept that you may be imperfect and be okay with that? And how can you use your strengths and weaknesses to synergize? Poor communication is another cause of relationship insecurities. So stop assuming you know what the other person is thinking and expecting them to know what you're thinking. It just ain't fair. It's important to practice mindfulness and articulate what you are thinking about anything. Be aware of what you're feeling, what you're needing, and tell the other person. And this could even include, you know, things like gifts for holidays or something. So often I find people getting stressed out because they don't know what to get their significant other and significant others getting so frustrated when they get a present that they don't want. It's really important to recognize that. It's really important to recognize that we need to tell other people. One of the things that I do with my clients is to encourage them to keep a list. You know, when we think about presents, you know, things times come up, holidays, birthdays, Mother's Day, whatever. Keep an active list in Amazon or Walmart or somewhere where you can keep a gift list available or even a registry. You know how you can sign up for like a wedding registry or a some other kind of registry. Keep a list and let people have a link to that list so they can get you what you want. You know, you're letting them know you know an array of things. When it comes to other things, it's still important to tell people what's important to you. Don't get into a relationship with somebody and assume that they have all the same priorities that you do. That's where open communication and honesty comes in. And lack of connection is the final one in an intentional activity. Make a list of all the things that you like to do and encourage your partner to do the same. And then you put that list on the fridge and you intentionally spend time with each other every day. And you know, I know that Sounds totally exhausting. But it doesn't have to be an hour or two hours or three hours, 15 minutes. What can you do to spend intentional time with your significant other for 15 minutes each day? And that goes along with the creating the sense of connection and attention especially well in all relationships, not just adult relationships. Imbalance in power can be another cause of problem, problems in relationships. If you grew up in a household where there was a imbalance of power and that's what you learned, that's what you think is normal, then you may expect that in your current relationships. And if that doesn't happen, you may feel frustrated or angry and start having problems. It's important that we address anxieties with our clients about dependency or helplessness. If they're afraid that they won't be able to survive without the other person, that often tells us that they're expecting the other person to sort of assume a parental role. Develop support systems and strategies and disaster plans in case something happens in the relationship. Not saying that it will, but if people are anxious that if this relationship ends, I can't survive. Okay, let's look at how probable that is that you actually will die or wouldn't be able to survive. But let's create a disaster plan. Heaven forbid something should happen. What is your disaster plan? Would you move in with your sister? Or what would you do? Sometimes that helps people feel a little bit more grounded. Make sure to address jumping to conclusions and personalization. I like to do Family Feud with this one because it. It's one that can be funny, just like Family View does. You can create your own little Family Feud board. And I say something like, we surveyed a bunch of people. What are the top three explanations for? And you know, one could be why your significant other comes home and smells like somebody else's perfume. Or what are the top three explanations for why your significant other doesn't text back right away? And encourage people to identify all of the assumptions they make. You know, if this person doesn't text back right away, my automatic assumption is this. It helps people see that there are common conclusions that they jump to and start identifying alternate reasons. You can also do it with the other way. And say we surveyed a bunch of people, what are the top three explanations for. For why I didn't text back right away? You know, you can do it in both. Both ways. So you get them thinking about what they're assuming, but you also get them thinking about what might really have happened. Relationship gingerbread. And you can probably do this with other things, but you Know, gingerbread can be fun just because it's, it's edible. If you talk about a relationship like a house, like a home, and you want people to feel safe in their home, just like you want people to feel safe in their relationships, then you can create a relationship gingerbread house. If there is trust in the relationship, then you've got the floor. If there's communication and honesty that makes up the roof, if there's compassion and caring, you've got the walls. If there's compromise, you've got windows and commitment, you've got doors. So that gives you the basic shell of the house. Now we talk about what happens to the people living in this house. If that one of these things doesn't exist. If there's no windows, you know, it gets really stuffy in there. If there are no walls, the roof falls down on your head. But it helps them see how each one of these characteristics is integral to a relationship. And then they can go on and add decorations to make it more homey. Landscaping, shutters, window boxes, etc represent other characteristics of healthy relationships, like we talked about in last Thursday's class, that are used to make a house, a home, that are used to make a relationship, to enhance a relationship, things that you do together. It's important that people also understand the grieving process. They've got their current relationship and there may be a lot to do there, but they may have prior relationships that they still need to grieve in terms of a loss. Relationships in their, with their primary attachment figures, maybe those didn't go so well. There are a lot of people who are put up for adoption who have issues with needing to grieve that relationship, even if they never knew their birth parent. A lot of times there is some question in there, some, why didn't this person want me? So we want to help people review messages that they've received about dealing with losses. Number one, how do they feel about even acknowledging this happened? What happens once you move to acceptance through that grief process? What happens when you let go of that anger and that depression? Is it okay? And if not, why not? And then they start identifying losses and feelings associated with the dysfunctional relationship, whatever relationship they're grieving and identify continuing issues and stemming from the relationship. And you can identify things that may be associated with losses, associated with a relationship, maybe with a primary caregiver that was very dysfunctional, and identify how you didn't have the mother or father that you felt you deserved. And then they can work through grieving that they can identify you know, other losses that they feel, you know, they're angry. Why are they angry about that relationship still? And they need to figure out if there's something underlying that anger that they need to grieve and work through the stages. We want to help people address emotional versus factual reasoning. Encourage them to grieve those past losses. Their partners, their friends, their parents. One thing that you can do is what I call, or what is called the heartbreak pot. You get a terracotta pot, a big one, and break it into large pieces. So you're going to put it in a, in a bag or, or a pillowcase and just gently tap it. Or like I learned the first year in Tennessee, you can get it wet and then freeze it because terracotta evidently does not like to freeze and thaw, and that will crack it. Either way, you're going to break the pot into large pieces using paint, pens and markers. Write on the inside of the broken pieces their feelings about the loss on the outside of the pieces, the outside facing out. Name or draw their sources of support and then glue them back together so they can see that those sources of support are helping them, you know, become whole again. Encourage people to love themselves and believe they deserve love, which means knowing their love language, and I know we talked about that on Thursday, so I'm not going to go into it huge here, but knowing their love language and being willing to communicate with themselves in their love language, spend quality time with themselves, do acts of service for themselves. You know, there are a lot of things that we can do to nurture ourselves. A lot of people feel super guilty about this. So we want to explore where they got that message that they should feel guilty about loving themselves and nurturing themselves. But we also want them to become, again, more aware of those love languages. Touch quality time, acts of service, words of affirmation and gifts, and know what the people in their life, what their love languages are in order to enhance that sense of connection and affection in those relationships. Core principles of relationships. Uniqueness of the relationship from others. Encourage your clients to look at their current relationship and celebrate its uniqueness. How is it different this time? How is this person different? And hopefully better than prior relationships? We want to help people integrate beliefs, behaviors and motivations, recognizing that relationships are about synergy. We talked about temperament in the last presentation and, and I shared how my husband and I are like polar opposites, but relationships are about synergy. What he does well, I'm not so good at, and vice versa. And that works because then we can accomplish more things Homeschooling our kids. I was great at the English part and the grammar, and he was the science and math guy. So it. It worked. We synergized. Have people examine what beliefs, motivations, and behaviors that they share in each relationship. You know, it's not just about romantic relationships. It's also about friendships and maybe with their, you know, family and things like that. But what beliefs, motivations, and behaviors do you share with each person? What beliefs, motivations, and behaviors do you each have that complement each other? Again, looking at temperament, tendencies and values. Try to help people have a mutually envisioned trajectory. And in relationships, this is really important. In prior relationships, they may have felt rushed to commit to something, or on the opposite end, they may not have felt like their partner was on the same page, and so they're worried about it. In this current relationship, it's important that people start talking and talk openly and honestly about relationship goals, relationship activities, relationship pace. You know, when my husband was in school, in high school, he used to see his girlfriend, you know, twice a week, something like that, because he was on a sports team, he worked, he was valedictorian. He had a lot of stuff going on, and that was plenty for him twice a week. My daughter, on the other hand, sees her boyfriend every single day and, like, for multiple hours every single day. And for my husband, he's looking at it, going, oh, my gosh, that would drive me crazy. That's just way too much together time. And. But for my daughter, she likes that level of interactivity, shall, shall we say. So, talking about relationship goals, how much time, Quality time is enough. What do you envision this looking like? If we start doing dating, are we going to see each other once a week? Are we going to see each other every day? You know, talking about what your needs and hopes are, what activities do we do together versus apart? You know, do you expect us to do everything together, or are we going to do some things together and then I'm going to do some things with other people? And what pace are you hoping for in this relationship? And this isn't one you have on the first date when you say, okay, you got six months to decide whether we're going to get married or, you know, that would scare the living bejesus out of most people. But it is, at some point, a conversation that needs to be had. And, you know, even if it's something like, okay, are we going to start being exclusive now? You know, are we going to move in together? Whatever that next step is, it's important to communicate Positive and negative evaluation is really important. Yes, there is going to be negative. No relationship is going to be 100% perfect 100% of the time. What's important is to recognize the things that you really love in this relationship and emphasize those, you know, there are a lot of things that are really awesome and then mitigate the negatives. I remember my, one of my stepfathers was habitually late. I mean, and, and I'm not talking 10 minutes late, I'm talking like two hours late. Just he, he had no concept of time and it drove my mother absolutely bonkers. But he had so much other good stuff about him. So instead of just breaking up over that, she learned to tell him two hours ahead of time was when they were going to leave. So if they needed to leave by three, she would tell him one o'. Clock. And that was a way of mitigating the negatives for her. So it's important to look at what can you do to compromise or to find solutions to the situation. Responsiveness is important to pay attention and be responsive to your own needs. What am I needing in this relationship? What am I getting? What am I not getting? And if there's something you're not getting, then figure out why you need it and how to make that happen. And again, you need to tell your partner. Making sure to emphasize with to clients that they can't expect their partner to know what they need. They need to be willing to know what they need and ask for. It doesn't mean they're always going to get it, but it gives their partner a chance to be responsive. If they say, hey, and it could be something like, hey, I, my back is really sore, can you rub my back? You know, it could be something simple like that, or you know, I'm having a really bad day, can we go on a walk and talk? You know, those are simple requests, but if you assume your partner is just going to pick up on it and say, hey, why don't we do this? You're probably setting yourself up for failure. And if you've been in relationships before where you weren't allowed to assert your own needs, you may have difficulty or anxiety. Anxiety about paying attention to your own needs. Trusting and feeling and asking, talking about for what you need and pay attention and ask and be responsive to your partner's needs. Your partner may not be comfortable or used to communicating their needs. A lot of us expect mind reading. That's a really bad habit that we have. And so it's important to periodically ask, you know, it seems like you're down. Is there anything I can do to help or would you like to go on a walk and talk for a little while? The onus for our own happiness is on us, but it is still nice to try to be pay attention and be as responsive as possible. Develop rules for discussing and resolving challenges. And I use that term as a euphemism, you know, do you not go to bed angry or sometimes you have people who are very different. You know, an extrovert and an introvert. So you have rules about. The introvert gets to go think for 30 minutes or something and then you will sit down and talk about it. So the extrovert knows that, okay, we're going to talk and the introvert knows they're going to have time to think. Whatever the rules are, it's important to lay out those rules. So when you're in the heat of the moment, you don't get. You don't feel ignored or abandoned or left hanging or overwhelmed because you don't. You're not getting the time. You need to think through what's going on. Maintenance. Both partners need to engage in self maintenance activities. You know, engaging with friends, doing hobbies, those sorts of things, as well as relationship maintenance activities. Activities. Relationships don't just grow, you know, they need to be nurtured just like a plant that you would plant in a garden. We want to emphasize the importance again of self maintenance. If you are completely drained, if you're a little plant that's completely withered from the heat of the sun, you're not going to be around for much longer, you're not going to be able to help anybody else. You need to make sure that you are fully charged in order to be able to be present for other people. Shared goals and needs. Make sure people discuss their shared goals and needs and they're willing to compromise on differing goals and needs such as how to spend money or sex or activities. There are a lot of things that happen in relationships that people really need to start communicating about more and have that communication before it. It is a disagreement. You know, be open from the beginning about preferences for how they spend money and budgeting and sex and activities and knowing and exceeding relationship expectations. Knowing what a good relationship looks like to the person based on what they've been in and what they hope to have, and knowing what a good relationship looks like to your partner and. And then the two of you meld those together and create what you think you want as a relationship to one another. Mindfulness questions for clients they need to regularly ask themselves in their relationships, what am I feeling? Am I feeling abandoned? Am I feeling anxious? What's triggering it? Am I emotionally and physically safe? If not, what do I need to do? Is this bringing up something from the past? A past relationship? A past trauma? How is this situation different? How am I different now than I was back then? And how can I silence my inner critic? And finally, what would be a helpful reaction that moves you or moves me more toward my goals? Getting upset, getting angry. You know that's probably not going to help me. That's just going to motivate me to do something. So what can I do with that energy that will help move me toward my goals and a positive emotional experience? Low self esteem and failed prior relationships can cause problems in future relationships. Transference, cognitive distortions, low self esteem and poor relationship maintenance can all contribute to relationship insecurities.