Unexpressed Anger

Resentment is one of the number one killers of relationships.  Unexpressed feelings of anger and irritation fester and grow like a cancer in the relationship creating a lens of negativity through which the relationship becomes viewed.  A healthy relationship is not one without conflict or anger (both are natural and normal experiences) it one in which each partner feels understood and supported.  There are many reasons people choose resentment over honesty and being forth coming.  Some of the most common are fear abandonment, fear of the other’s anger or reaction, and replicating family patterns of not expressing difficult feelings.  Regardless of the motivation, avoidance of addressing difficult feelings like anger prevents potential healing dialogue and behavioral changes.  Being able to express one’s feeling with the goal of being understood (not punishing) is one of the essential keys to a healthy relationship.  We owe it to ourselves and our partners to be honest in a respectful way that allows them to understand us.  They cannot read our minds.  As seductive as the fantasy of having a partner that intuitively knows all our feelings and how to soothe us is, attempting to act out this fantasy consistently yields the result of resentment.  We are no longer preverbal infants waiting for a parent to soothe us with food, a diaper change and holding, unable to express or meet our own needs.  We are adults capable of owning our feeling and needs and able to care of ourselves in a healthy way.  One essential form of self care is the respectful expression of difficult feelings to the end of understanding and problem solving.

Knowing Where We’re Coming From

When making decisions it very important to consider where we are coming from.  That is, knowing what is the underlying feeling that is propelling our decision. One way to assess where we are coming from is to ask our self, “Dose this choice feel expansive or contractive?” Choices based in fear feel contractive, and generally speaking keep us small and stuck, even if they feel safe.  Choices based on love, connection, creativity, compassion, empathy and understanding feel expansive and vast.  In trying to create the lives and relationships we want we need to be coming from an expansive and positive position even if it is scary and unfamiliar.  There is nothing wrong with being afraid; however, if we make choices based on fear we will get the same unsatisfying results:  The safety of familiar suffering.  We need not settle for this.  We can have the lives and relationships we seek by bravely pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone to expand into the realms of vastness, creativity, and love.

Raising the Bar

I have found personally and professionally that people are largely creatures of habit who will continue to engage in consistent routines of thought, behavior, and feelings until we are in so much pain that we can no longer continue with the old routine. This seems to be a large part of the human learning curve.  It is as if we are asleep at the wheel of our lives and do not wake up until we crash the car.  Fortunately most of the casualties of living an unconscious life are not fatal only painful.  When we have finally have had enough of the familiar and safe suffering of repetition, we become ready to make changes that push us out of our comfort zone.  We wake up and now are in a position to be intentional about our life choices.  A bar raising question that can help us to wake up without crashing the car is, “What kind of life and relationships do I want my child(ren) to have and am I living that example?”  It does not matter whether you have children or not to ask this question.  I found every time I have asked this question to a client whether they had children or not that the type of decent, ethical, respectful, loving, balanced lives that they described were of higher standard than what they were living and helped to create a vision worth working toward.

Avoidance and Honesty

Sometimes partners avoid certain difficult conversation or refrain from being honest because of wanting to please the other or fear of hurting the other's feelings.  Whenever we engage in avoidance we are setting the situation up to stay the same or fail.  The result of avoided conversations or conversation where we are not honest about our wants and needs is generally dissatisfaction for both partners.  Faking it does not work in the long run because it creates resentment.  We can be honest and respectful in owning our feelings and needs. We can listen to our partner's feelings and needs. And we can parse out ways we need to take care of ourselves from ways we can learn to improve our problem solving as a partnership.  The key is being honest with ourselves and then showing up for our partner by being honest.

How Do We Listen When We Listen?

One of the essential healing elements in working with trauma cases is listening to the person’s story, listening to their pain and taking the story and the pain seriously. Often when abuse happens within a family or relationship there is a tendency for the family or partner to minimize, dismiss, or somehow excuse the situation.  It is my understanding that the causes of theses minimizing behaviors are at least two fold.  The first is being fearful of being uncomfortable to really listen to another person’s pain.  The second is related to denial, due to shame of either causing the suffering or not stopping the suffering the other experienced.  While trauma cases are extreme by their nature of violence, neglect, and verbal and emotional abuse, it has become clear to me as a professional in the mental health field that one of our basic needs as people in relationships is to be heard and taken seriously.  This begs the question, “How can I listen better?”  An excellent starting place is to listen in the way that you that you want to be heard.  If we want our partners, family members, or colleagues to listen to us in non-defensive, non-judgmental, open minded way, we must do our part to create that environment by listening to them as such. I am in no way excusing any form of abusive behavior.  The purpose of this piece is begin facilitating healing in relationships by attempting to shine light on the way we listen.

How’s That Working for You?

We all at one point in our lives have engaged in some habit(s) that did not work for us.  The list is long. Some of the most popular are avoidance, procrastination, addiction and aggression.  These habits formed to protect us emotionally in some way and as a result we become attached to them.  At some level they worked.  But for most of us there comes a time when they stop working.  That is, the habit that once served to protect us emotionally now is preventing us from having the relationships and life we desire.  Now what?  The solution has at least two parts: The first part is being aware of the old messages and urges and seeing them for what they are.  The second part is making a conscious choice as whether to engage in that old habit or to do something different, something that dose work for us now.  I quit smoking many years ago, yet to this day when I get upset one of the first things I want to do is have a cigarette.  I listen to the message under the urge which is generally, “I don’t want to feel this unpleasant feeling,” and choose not to smoke.  Instead I process by reflecting on what going on by taking a long walk, journaling, or seeking support.  The point is, it’s not about not having unhealthy messages or urges, it’s about seeing them for what they are and making choices that fit with our lives now and the lives and relationships we are trying to create.