Downloads from Relationship Counseling

I am a relationship counselor (with self and/or others) working remotely, and when I get off a call I often jot down notes to bring light to common topics that came up. These sometimes become articles, but mostly they are just notes full of insight that want to be shared. No personal client data is ever shared.

Here are some points from August 2022:

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When we emerge from the New Relationship Energy phase (also known as the Honeymoon Phase) of a new relationship, and things start to get crunchy — know this is to be expected. Stuff that is getting in the way of the flow is coming up to be cleared.

When we are feeling things like anger, resentment, bitterness, and frustration in relationship, that's a signal to take a step back and get back into ourselves. We aren't going to solve anything from that place, anyway.

We do our own work to get into our bodies — whatever practices we know we need to be doing to be ok before engaging in stuck patterning. Once we're feeling like ourselves, or as close to it as we can get (ask community or professionals for help, if necessary), then get curious for what's going on from the partner's perspective and what their process is. Whatever theirs is, that's their stuff, and not for us to own — but we have to respect it, or there is no long-term future. If there isn't mutual respect and kindness present, something is broken.

To fix it: Get curious about win-wins. Find them. We will probably have to use our words (sorry!). It sucks that people aren't mind-readers and can't know our inner experiences from witnessing our outer experiences, but we can help them put the whole puzzle together by using our words. Be more curious about win-wins than committed to wins. Be on the same team.

Note: Healthy relationships will come through this easily. If it's always hard and crunchy and you never seem to have peace for very long, something big is broken and generic relationship advice isn't going to fix it. There's probably a deep inauthenticity, or something that needs to be said that is being hidden, maybe broken respect, or righteous rage — something big buried deep keeping the foundation of the relationship rocky.

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From a call earlier, they said, "Yeah, but I'm doing the self-hatred thing on the expert level, I can't just put it down."

And I can't stop thinking about it.

I was, too. And it was killing me, my organs were shutting down unable to do their jobs with the stress I was creating for myself creating wounds that needed constant soothing. I was doing it on an expert level and now I'm becoming an expert on it as I shut the whole self-hatred thing down, piece by piece. I had to because I was dying but I'm so resilient it wasn't actually killing me, and I had to wake up to it — there appeared no alternative.

If we're playing out some self-destructive pattern on expert level it just means we're collecting extra data on the whole pattern — it doesn't mean we have to keep doing it when we're done. Once we see every bit of the pattern, we get bored with playing around with it and stop.

We can all stop any pattern we are engaged with when we are done with them.

Self-destructive behavior is literally destructive. It's incredibly common, and it's one of the reasons we can't have nice things.

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Downloads from the call I was just on:

Sometime around the #metoo movement the paradigm from "power-over" to "win-win" switched. We are in early days of win-win right now, with it gaining strength over power-over all the time (you can see that with trials and people actually being held accountable for power-over behavior).

Look for the win-wins, this helps the wins, win.

When looking to describe win-win connections, look for language that is in alignment with the new paradigm (lean away from power-over language).

Recognize that the marginalized parts of the collective have wounding and trauma that's being carried into the new paradigm. All of that needs a lot of space and understanding. When confronted with a trauma response, witness it and give it space to express itself (as long as it's not being abusive) and let it unpack itself. It will. It needs to be seen and not create an aversion, and then it will dissolve into new paradigm possibilities.

The paradigm shift is real. It's subtle right now, but as we lean into it collectively it shifts more quickly.

Look for the win-wins. Make technology that connects them. Incentivize it in old paradigm systems. We can do hard things, especially when we're all looking for the win-wins and showing up to make them happen.

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