Managing emotions

Should I stay in my relationship? This question often haunts us when we’re feeling unclear about how well a relationship is serving our needs. Making a difficult choice can be an uncomfortable experience. We lose sleep, consult others incessantly, and list endless pros and cons to arrive at the right decision. We stress, realizing that we bear the responsibility for our choice. Even more, we feel guilt and shame for feeling unclear of our intentions towards someone or something else, and the impact our paralysis has on others.

What you’re feeling is ambivalence: Two conflicting feelings that creates an uncomfortable tension, like a tug-o-war. Oftentimes, ambivalence visits us in our relationships or in making a big decision.

When we have good reason to both stay and to go, how do we get out of ambivalence and choose?

4 Reasons We Struggle to Choose Whether to Stay in Your Relationship

1. Wondering to Stay in Your Relationship or Go Is A Valid Response to Having Multiple Needs In Conflict.  

When a decision feels like choosing between two equally important needs, its normal to feel stuck and unable to decide. For example, we may feel dissatisfied with a job offering us no room to advance, and yet feel secure receiving the consistent paycheck each month this same job offers. The need for growth and security may feel equally important, and therefore we’re ambivalent about our job; one need is met by staying, while the other could be met by leaving.

2. I’m Not Ready to Make a Change, Just Yet 

Sometimes, we can acknowledge a desire, such as experiencing a committed romantic relationship. However, expressing this desire isn’t yet worth to us the disruption to our current relationship, where the desire for commitment isn’t mutual. As a result, we experience ambivalence within the relationship. We feel ambivalent about our circumstances until the motivation to change them outweighs our desire to stay the same.  Check and see if you ask yourself the following questions:

Are there downsides to making this change?

Are there things I like about staying the same?

If so, there may be not enough to sway you at this time to make a choice. We often experience ambivalence as a result.

3. I Don’t Believe Change is Possible

Sometimes, we don’t really believe we can have what we want, so we prevent ourselves from taking action in the direction of our truest desire. It can be difficult to make a choice if our desire is strong, yet we just can’t choose it out of fear. Fear of the unknown, of failure, of loss. Check and see if you ask yourself the following questions:

Is it difficult to prioritize this change due to time, money, or resources?

Am I hesitant because I’ve tried this change in the past and it was unsuccessful?

4. Ambivalence Is Modeled in Early Attachment 

Our connection with our earliest caregivers has a large impact on how ambivalence shows up in our relationships later in life. Adult attachment is often related to the emotional closeness and consistency experienced in our younger years with a caregiver.

How to Make a Choice When You’re Ambivalent to stay in your relationship

1. Accept That All Change is Grief.

Making choices is hard, because with every decision something is gained, while at the same time, something is lost. If we leave our current job, we lose our current job. When we consider the fact that there’s no other outcome than to risk losing something we have for hopes of something better, change can elicit real feelings of sadness and disappointment in the outcome we’d hoped for but didn’t get. The change, even if a positive one, comes with grief – despite all the ways staying the same can also cause us distress. Likewise, you may conclude that you’re committed to keeping the job you have, despite its challenges. While staying may be the right decision for you, there’s real grief from allowing other opportunities to pass as you invest in the one you’ve chosen.

2. Clarify Your Values to Make a Choice

When our needs compete, we can use our own values as a framework to help make a choice. Reflect on who you wish to become. Does the person you’re becoming value growth? Authenticity? Integrity? Loyalty? And, if you were to really sit with it, how would you prioritize your values? For instance, clarifying that you value authenticity over loyalty, even just slightly, creates a pathway toward resolving ambivalence; Your values act as a compass guiding you in the direction that’s closest to who you want to be. This way, even our most ambivalent relationships and circumstances can be reorganized to align with the life that feels congruent within us.

3. Normalize Ambivalence as a Part of Making Big Changes.

Although it may feel confusing and wrong, ambivalence is a normal experience we have when we’re deciding whether to undergo a significant change. The next time you feel the inner tension between staying or going, take comfort in knowing there’s a part of you trying bring all of your needs to your attention. When we accept our ambivalence, we can get curious about the information it has to tell us about our needs, values, and desires.

4. Choose Your Pain.

“We must suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.” – Jim Rohn

Entrepreneur Jim Rohn knowingly said that we “must suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret.” While we don’t always get to choose whether or not we’ll experience pain, there’s often a choice in what type of pain we endure. For instance, we can choose the pain and consequences of leaving, staying, accepting, declining, avoiding, isolating, acquiescing, delaying, or changing. But the consequences and pain associated with making any decision is part of being human, and is here to stay. The good news? We can grow the capacity to tolerate and move through the pains associated with decision making.

5. Recognize That Ambivalence Is A Choice.

Despite feeling paralyzed and stuck, we can choose to remain in or resolve our ambivalence. Consequently, remaining ambivalent is a choice to stay in something that Northhampton Couple’s therapy calls too good to leave, but too bad to stay in relationship. When we live too long in ambivalence, it can cause problems in our lives, such as eroding the trust in our relationships.

6. Make a Choice to Reach Out

Ambivalence doesn’t need to define your relationships or decisions. Seek out guidance to help you align life’s inevitable decisions with you’re personal values. I help others identify and resolve their emotional ambivalence so they can lead lives of greater freedom and safety.

You’ve taken the opportunity to say you’re sorry to your spouse after forgetting that important event of theirs, yet it almost seems to have made things worse. Having just made yourself vulnerable, you’re now also confused why trying to own your oversight has now caused an even bigger rupture. You know it’s a long life and you’re not perfect, and want more than anything to be able to effectively do something about when you’ve messed up and hurt someone you love.

If you look at today’s flower industry, offering good apologies has become a major business. You can choose from endless options of thoughtful apology notes to send to those we’ve hurt. This begs the question, how do we know what someone else needs to hear in order to feel like an apology is real?

Can You Speak the Language of Apologies?

We’ve likely heard of the 5 Love Languages of gifts, quality time, acts of service, words of affirmation, and physical touch from by Dr. Gary Chapman. But have you ever considered what your apology language might be? Take how the 5 love languages offer us a framework for how we give and receive love. Apologies are also expressed and received differently between people. The way we give and receive apologies can have a big impact on the quality and longevity of our relationships.

The 5 Apology Languages

We’ve all developed a sense for whether an apology is meaningful to us or not. This process for us typically forms out of our lived experience. This means that no two people have the same experience when it comes giving or getting an apology. Here are 5 common types needed in relationships.

 
1. Making Restitution

This form of apology is for someone that may never take simply hearing the words “I’m sorry” as a real apology. This person needs to hear you clearly explain how your actions had a negative impact; they need to know that you understand why your actions were wrong, unjust, or harmful. They also long to hear that you still love or appreciate them, even though you hurt them. 

2. Expressing Regret

Sometimes, a simple “I’m sorry” is all that someone needs to feel a genuine apology. For this person, it gets right to the point. This apology is paired best with reflecting your remorse through body language. Depending on one’s culture, this might include gestures such as eye contact or a gentle touch while speaking. 

3. Planning Change

Some people need your words paired with a clear action step to see that the hurt won’t be caused again in the future. However, change is hard, and doesn’t happen overnight. Taking small steps to change demonstrates a track record to others for lasting, effective change. 

4. Accepting Responsibility 

For many people, if the person apologizing can’t admit fault, then they won’t see the apology as genuine. This being said, it’s truly difficult for some people to admit they’ve made a mistake or have hurt someone else. If this may be the case for you, it might be worth considering whether admitting to a shortcoming is what your loved one needs to consider your apology.

5. Requesting Forgiveness 

Some people feel an apology is effective if the person who caused them harm asks them for forgiveness. This is because requesting forgiveness cannot be demanded; it can only be offered by choice. As a result, asking for forgiveness is a vulnerable act that risks rejection. When someone chooses to ask another for forgiveness, just the willingness to ask may be enough for a person to regain trust in the other.

3 Steps to Effective Apologies  

1. Uncover The Apology Needed

Webster’s Dictionary defines an apology as “an admission of error or discourtesy”, or “an expression of regret”. These are both apologies, yet they’re two very different things. As a result, we may give a genuine apology, but it isn’t the kind of apology that feels healing to the other person. For example, we can admit an error, yet the other person doesn’t believe we made a true apology. Likewise, expressing how poorly you feel about causing them pain will work for another person in the apology process.

2. Release the Outcome of Apologizing

Once understanding the diversity in how people determine what’s a real apology, it’s important to let go of the outcome. While providing the right apology is the first step towards reconciliation, even the best apology can’t determine that reconciliation between two people occurs. Each person in a relationship has a choice in deciding whether they wish to restore what’s been broken. Consequently, making peace with the idea that an apology doesn’t always mean reconciliation will help you to adjust your expectations. In this way, we can experience greater freedom in life by knowing that it is always possible to offer a true apology, even if we don’t have full control over the outcome.

3. Know Your Own Apology Needs

An important part of knowing how to apologize to others is to understand what kind of apology we ourselves need to feel we can continue to experience trust in the relationship. Here are some practical exercises to help you master the art of apologizing. 

Reflect on Past Apologies

One helpful way to increase our mastery of apologies is journalling about the best or worst apology you’ve ever received. How did this apology make you feel? Did you really like that they showed you their feelings of regret for what they caused? Or maybe they instead asked you what they could do immediately to make it better? Alternatively, consider how someone in our past offered an apology that added to the hurt instead of alleviating it. Once we understand our own needs in an apology, it becomes easier to provide more sincere and effective apologies to others in our lives. 

Discover the Apology Language of Those in Your Life

Just as writing about your own experiences with apologizing can help you to understand the apology process, so can asking the people you’re closest to about their experiences. This doesn’t have to be in a moment of conflict. Actually it works great to learn these important details about your friends and family in periods of peace and positive relating. Try finding a moment over coffee or during your next outing to ask your loved ones about their definition of a good apology.

Reach Out 

Connect with someone who can support you in understanding your unique relational patterns with work, friends, and family. I help people strengthen their relationships so they can lead lives of greater safety and freedom.

Emotional intelligence is crucial for our mental and relational health.

Sometimes you worry that your mood changes at the drop of a hat. A family member asks you a question that catches you off guard, and you yell. Some time afterward, you realize that their question was pretty reasonable, and that the yelling may have been an overreaction. You start to add up all the times, even over the past week, in which you had a short fuse. You feel bad at how it impacts your relationships. Yet you know telling yourself to “stop it” only goes so far. What’s going on here?

Our ability to navigate relationships and reactions well involves a self-reflective skill called emotional intelligence. It’s the ability to notice what you’re feeling so you can manage it in a healthy way. Can you describe the difference between feeling:

• stressed vs. overwhelmed?
• frustrated vs. irritated?
• angry vs. disappointed?

In this blog, you’re going to learn how to pinpoint with accuracy what’s going on inside you at any given moment. By practicing this set of skills, you’ll be able to make better choices for yourself and relationships with others.

Here’s how to breakdown pinpointing your emotions.

RULER: An Acronym for Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence is a common term used to describe the awareness of one’s emotions. However, the way emotional intelligence is frequently discussed is often not the way it really is. According to emotions expert Dr. Marc Brackett, emotional intelligence is better understood as a set of skills. He uses the acronym RULER to describe these skills.

Understanding Emotions with RULER

R: Recognizing Feelings

The R in RULER stands for Recognizing emotions in oneself and others.

Have you ever tried reading someone’s facial expression as a clue to know they’re feelings about what you just said? What about providing an accurate answer to the question, “how’re you feeling today?” These are common scenarios in which recognizing emotions ourselves and in others become important to effective communication.

Start with the Energy and Pleasantness of How You Feel

In addition to RULER, Dr. Brackett shares the following tool called the Mood Meter from the Yale Center of Emotional Intelligence to help us differentiate emotions that may seem generally similar to one another.

Energy and Pleasantness

Can you locate the general sense of how high or low energy you feel right now? That’s often easier in the moment than recalling a nuanced emotion word, at first. How about the general sense of how pleasant or unpleasant you’re feeling? With the mood meter, you start with the general sensation of how you’re feeling and differentiate from there. For example, you may readily identify that you’re feeling lower energy and a moderate pleasantness. As a result, you’re able to determine with greater accuracy that you’re feeling relaxed in the moment.

U: Understanding Feelings

The U in RULER stands for Understanding the causes and consequences of emotions.

“Is this person interested in what I’m saying?” “Am I bored?” Once you’re able to recognize emotions in yourself and others, you’re next able to get curious about why someone feels the way they do. As a result, we can decide how to best connect to them in the present moment.

Differentiation Between Similar Feelings

One common conception about our emotions is that many emotion words are actually just describing the same generic feeling.

According to Dr. Brackett, when we’re able to differentiate between emotion states, then we’re able to pick a strategy that works best for that situation. For example, if you’re uncertain about the future, a breathing exercise may not help you. However, a cognitive strategy such as challenging a negative thought might be of assistance. On the other hand, if you’re actually overwhelmed, a breathing strategy such as box breathing may be the best strategy for the moment.

4 Commonly Confused Feelings

When we misdiagnose what we’re feeling, we’re unable to fully know the best strategy to cope with it. Here’s 4 common emotions commonly confused for the others.

L: Labeling Feelings

The L in RULER stands for Labeling emotions using a nuanced vocabulary.

Describing our emotions using precise words. Consider the things that make you feel peeved versus irritated versus enraged. While everyone may feel emotions differently in their body, it’s important to have a rich vocabulary for the precise emotion we’re feeling. This is because without it, we can’t really communicate effectively about our specific experience. When there’s a common language of emotion within a community, we can communicate about these emotions in a way we can understand. 

Granularity Within A Feeling

Just as distinguishing between two emotions helps us to determine what to do next, so does being able to distinguish between different shades of the same emotion category. Take for instance, anger. Are you outraged about a deep injustice? Or are you only mildly annoyed from someone changing lanes with no signal during traffic? Often times, knowing the degree to which we’re feeling an emotion can help us even better select what we choose to do with our emotions. When our behavior choices are disproportionate to the emotion felt, it may be time to get curious about why that is. We can learn how to make different choices based on the granularity of our anger, sadness, or fear.

Differentiation: Distinctions Between Emotions

Granularity: Nuance Within An Emotion

E: Expressing Feelings

The E in RULER stands for Expressing emotions in accordance with cultural norms and social context.

We have to know how we feel. This is because when we know how we feel, we can decide what we want to do with those feelings instead of letting them determine our behavior by default. Knowing how and when to express emotions with different people across contexts and culture provides us the opportunity to effectively communicate with the people around us. As a result, we more readily achieve the outcomes we want in our interactions with others. And, in effect, other people can more clearly and readily see us, hear us, and know us. A great first step to practicing expressing emotions is to share your feelings daily with trusted others using a nuanced set of emotion words.

R: Regulating Feelings

The final R in RULER stands for Regulating Emotions with helpful strategies.

Any emotion on average, visits for around 90 seconds. Consequently, this helps us to know we can effectively manage any emotion, no matter how overwhelming it can be. Once we’re open to expressing our emotions, using helpful strategies can help us ride the wave of our emotions instead of the wave riding us. Some of these helpful strategies can include specific acts of self compassion, self-soothing, positive distractions, and physical movement.

Start Growing Emotional Intelligence Today

I help people start recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing, and regulating their emotions by providing guidance and support.

Trauma is a term loosely thrown around social media and coffee conversation to describe a variety of social interactions we encounter in our lives. We hear about experiences with trauma dumping, trauma bonding, and being triggered in everyday conversation. So, what really is trauma, and how do you know if you have it?

Trauma, Like a Spiderweb, is Protective.

Whether illuminated by the night sky or covered in morning dew, spiderwebs fascinate us with their intricate design. If you’ve ever walked through one, you know how strong they can be, despite being woven of finely spun silk. Commonly known as the way spiders capture food, spiderwebs are also a naturally defensive structure. In a spider web, any small tug to the outer silk strands alerts the spider of potential danger. Trauma is an inner defensive structure that behaves like a spiderweb: one delicate pull on our web-like trauma alerts us to self-protect from harm. This becomes expressed through our attitudes, values, and expectations about life. 

Trauma is what happens internally based on a negative event. 

Derived from the greek word τραύμα, meaning wound, the buzzword trauma covers a broad range of experiences today. From surviving a natural disaster to being bullied, determining whether a negative experience was traumatic depends on a multitude of factors. So, if we all have bad things happen to us at some point in our lives, how do we know if we’ve experienced trauma as a result of them? And, how much does trauma really affect us?

A Negative Event is Not Trauma.

The event is not what causes trauma. In fact, it’s the overwhelming emotional response to the negative event making us feel unsafe. Trauma shapes our reaction to future similar events, as to prevent the same overwhelm of the brain and body from happening again.

Trauma is Unique for Everyone.

Whether or not a person incurs trauma from a distressing event depends on a variety of factors. For instance, a car accident may injure one passenger who recovers fully, while another passenger of the same car experiences an emotional disturbance from the event well after it’s over. This can happen due to the variance across people’s lived experience, health, personality, and a variety of other factors. For instance, that same passenger who recovered completely from the car accident may experience a prolonged emotional disturbance from having their home broken into, or from discovering that a trusted other lied to them.

“Trauma is not what happens to you. Trauma is what happens as a result of what happens to you”.

– Gabor Mate`

Leading trauma expert Dr. Gabor Mate´ explains how “trauma is not what happens to you. Trauma is what happens as a result of what happens to you”. Dr. Mate´ also emphasizes how trauma takes on less obvious forms like emotional disturbances from our earliest relationships and experiences. This form of trauma results in lifelong pain until it is dealt with. As a result, it distorts our view of the world in a negative way, and impairs our ability to live fully in the present. 

Safety Means Having Resources

The difference between someone who has a traumatic response and one who doesn’t has to do with their internal and external resources. Someone with internal and external resources has the ability to return to safety. Internal resources are those like the ability to self-soothe, and having self-esteem. External resources include having a support system of trusted others who can help you to understand and process what happened. A person with fewer internal resources, such as a young child, remains overwhelmed by a distressing event because they’re not yet able to self-soothe. Additionally, if a child can’t process a negative event with trusted others, they make meaning of the negative event themselves. Examples of the stories we may tell ourselves when we’re unable to return to safety are those like, ‘the world is unsafe’, or that ‘we’re fundamentally a bad person’.

3 Main Types of Trauma

Acute according to Sandstone Care, comes from a single stressful event that overwhelms the body and keeps it in a state of vigilance. Examples include car accidents, physical violence, and natural disasters. Some common symptoms include irritability, flashbacks, avoidance, anxiety, and difficulties focusing.

Chronic occurs when a person exposed to repeated or extended stressful events develops a consistently overwhelmed nervous system. This form makes daily life difficult and distorts a person’s worldview, their perspective of themselves and of others. Examples include long-term illness, neglect, and domestic abuse. Common symptoms include depression, anxiety, difficulty managing your emotions, and feelings of guilt and shame.

Complex is when a child experiences a series of stressful events that overwhelm their system over a period of months or years. With this form, the brain and the body develop sophisticated defensive structures. These protect the young person, by putting them in a fight, flight, or freeze, or fawn mode when encountering unsafety or perceived unsafety. Common symptoms include a foggy memory, hyper-vigilance, low self esteem, headaches, and difficulty in interpersonal relationships.

2 Steps to Resolving Traumatic Experiences

By dealing with trauma, you reclaim your outlook on life and reconnect to yourself and others. If you or a loved experience difficulties, you can find help. Connecting with a trusted mental health professional can help you address your longstanding pain. Once this happens, we experience greater freedom in life, have less guilt and shame, and cultivate more capacity to live in the present moment.

1. Get Curious. Curiosity Moves Us Toward Healing.

The first step is to become curious about whether your emotional pain could be from the spiderweb-like protection system of trauma.

2. Reach Out.

The second step is to connect. I help people recover from traumatic experiences so they can lead lives of greater safety and freedom. Reach out to me today for a consultation.