Showing all posts in April 2014

Get Along Better and Enjoy Your Relationship

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Get Along Better and Enjoy Your Relationship

What was the last vacation you took? When was it? For some of you, it’s probably been a while since your last chunk of time off.

When you’re on vacation with your significant other, what feels different between you two? Do you feel more connected? Does laughter seem to come more easily? Do you feel more playful?

Time away from your daily responsibilities can have that impact. You feel more refreshed, resourced, and balanced. Extended vacations, micro breaks, and anything in between is important for health and sustainability. Staggering down time in between work time is a significant part of optimal productivity.

Most of us have felt the surge of renewed strength and ideas after coming back from a much-needed break. Do you remember the way your body, mind, and spirit seemed to shift thrill-seeking on that outdoor adventure vacation, luxuriating in a tropical paradise, site-seeing through Bulgaria? Whatever your last vacation included, did it seem like food tasted better, steps felt lighter, and even the future seemed more hopeful? A change of scenery can help to change perspective significantly.

With this in mind, let’s talk about taking “vacations” in your relationship. I’m not talking about a hall pass. I’m referring to the incorporation of playfulness, new ideas, and a break from the routine in your relationship. The same idea behind giving yourself some time away from the daily grind can be applied to your relationship. Mix it up! Experience new ways of having fun and relaxing together. It’s great for connection.

To do this, you don’t have to have impressive financial resources. You don’t need many resources at all, for that matter, just some imagination and intentionality. Some couples like to plan weekly dates for one another, trading off weeks. Some like to orchestrate treasure hunts for one another. Maybe you want to bring a little something special to each day of the week. Monday is foot rub day. Tuesday is game night. You get the idea. The point is to integrate playfulness into your relationship to provide respite from the constant responsibility, to give your relationship a hearty belly laugh so that each of you can maintain a strong connection to one another through the ebbs and flows.

Providing fun for one another, a chance for laughter and levity can also help each of you to share new things with one another, to learn about the others’ different ways of being, different traits that you have not yet experienced. This keeps things exciting! Playfulness is an effective combatant against the tendency to fall into a rut, the predictable, the mundane.

So, shake things up! Go somewhere new. Talk about something new. Play a new game. Talk about or try something new sexually. Engage in some new experience with one another and see where it takes you! The element of surprise in these fresh encounters will feel like a cool sip of something delicious.

While we might not be in a position to take exciting luxury vacations as often as we’d like, we can bring a type of luxury and rejuvenation to our relationships. Let me know how you decide to incorporate playfulness and ingenuity into your relationship. I’m curious!

Love and Be Loved,
Natalie

Improve Your Active Listening and Communication Skills in Relationship

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Improve Your Active Listening and Communication Skills in Relationship

Have you ever been in conversation with someone and you get the feeling that, for some reason, you’re just not connecting with one another? One of you explains something to the other and frustration continues to build. What’s happening? Sometimes it can be difficult to pinpoint a discernable problem which can compound any frustration.

Sometimes it’s best to start with the basics to see if you can figure out what went wrong. A fundamental element of dialogue is listening. So many of our conversations start to head off the rails because we’re not listening to each other.

It’s easy to see how this happens. Sometimes we’re sharing things about ourselves that require us to take risks and allow ourselves to be vulnerable. Anxiety and fear can accompany this sharing, and it can translate into impatience. We might run into some of our insecurities, which can cloud our interpretation of what someone is saying. Other times we aren’t able to completely regard what someone is communicating because we are thinking of what we’re going to say next. We’re not connecting as fully as we could be. We get into arguments, experience sadness, and feel frustration, all of which could have been prevented if we had listened to what was being said.

Most of us have experienced “the strategist.” Or some of us might be the strategist! I’m talking about the role some people play during a conversation in which they can hear some amount of distress and respond by attempting to fix the problem. What often happens is this; the strategist’s conversational counterpart describes a situation or an experience that has caused or is causing discomfort. Usually, in the spirit of support, the strategist starts to troubleshoot the problem (“Have you tried this? What about that? You know, you should…”). They’re not present with the other person. They’re not listening as much as they are reacting.

We experience the most support and connection when someone empathically listens to us, someone who wants to know about our whole experience (thoughts, feelings, behaviors), someone who wants to understand how we are impacted. Sometimes it feels like a challenge. For instance, when we are in conflict with someone, we might feel a little bit tempted to defend ourselves, place blame, or think of our next response while they’re speaking. I understand the pull here, and it’s not worth it. It often leaves us feeling worse.

Try this. Next time you’re in a conversation, set aside any distractions (including any distracting thoughts) and listen to what the other person is saying about their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Resist trying to fix, defend, or explain anything. Allow the other person to communicate their experience and allow yourself to lend a robust ear. If you hear that frustration is a part of their experience, speak to it. If they sound overwhelmed, scared or confused, let them know you see this. If their feelings are a direct result of something you have done/not done or said, it’s ok. Do it anyway; all the better that you do. You don’t have to defend yourself or explain anything right now. Just listen and let them know that you are witnessing their experience.

See where this experiment takes you. See how you feel, how the other person responds to you. The benefits are undeniable. The more you do it, the more it works. Let me know how it goes!

Love and Be Loved,
Natalie

Take Control of Your Insecurity

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Take Control of Your Insecurity

I have some questions for you about humor. Just think about them. How much do you notice yourself laughing throughout the day? How easily does laughter come to you? How often do you think you’re able to see the humor in situations?

I’m talking about genuine humor- not sarcasm, sardonicism, or cynicism. Sure, these approaches might make you feel witty and powerful during times when you’d rather avoid feeling vulnerable, but they require you to be pretty critical which often comes from a place of contempt. It can be difficult to benefit from the positive effects of humor when you’re using it contemptuously. There are plenty of ways to use humor in a nondefensive way.

One of the curative properties in humor is its aptitude for finding the humanity in conflict, whether it’s between you and another person, a group of people, or between you and an event. Have you ever noticed that? A joke or some other kind of levity can diffuse tension, bridge a divide, and restore compassion. When you’re using it with regard, humor is an incredibly reparative tool.

Now think about this; how often are you able to laugh at yourself? It’s great to be able to find the humor in what someone else says or does, but what about in what you say or do? What about your mistakes, perceived shortcomings, or faults? Some people find the ability to laugh at themselves elusive. They’d rather their faults go undetected and, when noticed, defend them with some amount of hostility. Usually, this promotes an increased sense of discomfort as it widens the divide in conflict.

When you allow yourself to laugh at your missteps, you immediately begin to draw your brain out of aggression, defensive anger and depending on the situation, sadness. You tap into your resilience and resource. This encourages you to be more patient, clear-headed, and less frustrated. When you are resourced, you feel more curious about your own and others’ experiences, and you are better able to connect to empathy. You are driven to strengthen the connection to another person or yourself.

Finding the humor in your mistakes takes some pressure off and gives you a little bit of breathing room. In that space you create, you’re more aware of yourself, of your choices. You can see yourself and your situation more objectively. You have less need to defend yourself because you start to see that your vulnerabilities don’t make you worthless or terrible; they make you human. You don’t need to defend yourself for being human.

So, the next time you find yourself approaching an argument (or in one), feeling defensive about something, or in conflict give yourself a chance to practice this exercise. See what kind of levity can be found in your situation. Maybe you’ll be in conflict with your partner about sharing household responsibilities. Maybe it will be during a time when you are trying to prove a point about something, and you get your facts wrong. Maybe you’ll find yourself engaged in a heated conversation with a family member about who is doing more for whom. Whatever it is, take a minute to find the humor and get some perspective. You’ll feel more appreciation for yourself and your loved ones.

Love and Be Loved,
Natalie

Understand and Manage Your Feelings

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Understand and Manage Your Feelings

We seem to be fascinated by emotions. We talk about them and try not to talk about them. We think about them and try not to think about them. We roll around in them and try to avoid them. We want to understand them if not release ourselves from their sometimes oppressive grip.

We separate them into categories: negative emotions and positive emotions. Feelings that we associate with pain like sadness, anger and embarrassment become negative emotions. Feelings we associate with pleasure like happiness, gratitude, and confidence becomes positive emotions. Pleasure seekers that we are, we begin to dread the emotions we value as negative and yearn for the emotions we value as positive.
And that brings us to the end of this post; feeling sad is bad and feeling happy is good… just kidding.
What if, instead of avoiding and vigorously fighting against certain feelings, we allowed ourselves to be curious about them? What if, instead of telling ourselves, “I shouldn’t be so sad about this…” we asked ourselves, “Why am I so sad about this?” (and “What do I mean by my attempt to quantify my feeling of sadness with the word ‘so’?”). What might we learn from empathically and curiously sitting with our feelings? All of them, not just the states we associate with pain and discomfort. “What’s happening right now that I feel confident?” “How am I interpreting this event which moves me to feel happy?”
Go on. Give it a try.
A lot of people report that they begin to feel an increased sense of ease in managing their emotional life. Eventually, some people begin to report a sense of gratitude for their feelings- all of their feelings. They learn things about their motivations, their resilience, and capabilities that they might not otherwise have accessed.
As we begin to understand ourselves, our emotions and their function, we feel less desperate to push out the “bad” and hold onto the “good.” We begin to see the connection between our different feelings, that the impermanence of happiness also means the impermanence of sadness. We aren’t chasing one thing while running from another.
I recommend starting with a feeling that gives you pleasure; a lot of people identify the emotions happiness and contentment as good places for them to start. Ok, so the next time you’re feeling happy or content, ask yourself some starter questions:
What’s happening right now that I feel happy?
Why do I connect that to happiness?
What does it mean about me?
Why is that important?
The more you do this, the insights that you get from this way of thinking will produce a shift in how you view your emotions, your control over your emotions, and your control over your thought process.
It can be pretty interesting to try this exercise when you’re at work, too. If you find yourself thinking, “Man, I would way rather be at the beach right now than sitting in this chair in the office.” That might be true for you, that you experience more pleasure at the beach than when you are working, but why is that? What is uncomfortable about being at work? Why? Why do you connect what is or is not happening at work to displeasure and or discomfort?
It’s pretty common for us to think we know why we’re uncomfortable only to find out we had it all wrong. This opens up pretty remarkable opportunities.
Love and Be Loved,
Natalie

 

 

Understanding and Accepting Sexuality

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Understanding and Accepting Sexuality

Remember that movie with the scene of a guy watching porn- his wife comes in, he seems embarrassed, and she yells at him? Yeah, you’re right. It does sound like a lot of scenes from a lot of different movies.

Humans seem to be engaged in a common conversation centered on our sexuality, mainly expressing that those of us who are connected to it are weasels and those of us who aren’t are honorable leaders in virtue. In most of these movies, the guy assumes responsibility for his transgression and tries to win his way back into his wife’s good graces. His wife wraps herself in support of her friends who completely understand that his act is punishable. How dare he express his sexuality!

I have been waiting for years to see a new response to this wearisome scene. Maybe the man’s partner comes in and starts watching it with him, and they have a conversation about it. Maybe they discover all sorts of information about one another, fantasies, desires, talents… who knows?! Maybe they both realize that they have more in common than they thought, but were too afraid to find out. One thing’s for sure, though; nothing shuts down the possibility of exploring new territory with someone like shaming.

Some people experience fear and hurt when they imagine their partner watching porn or masturbating. They see the browser history on the computer and feel slighted. It can be hard to feel open and curious when we feel insulted. It seems easier for us to lean on defensiveness and close ourselves off.

Let’s stop and think for a minute. What is it about others’ sexuality that spurns us so much? Is there something about how it relates to our sexuality that causes us to feel insecure, unworthy, or defective? Why? And what can we do to address this?

When we slow down and allow ourselves to be curious about why someone else’s expression of their sexuality bothers us, our discomfort becomes an opportunity for connection. That’s what we want, right? We want to feel more connected to our partners. We want a felt sense of safety and acceptance. To cultivate this, we have to do our part, which means not reacting impulsively to our fear, hurt, and anger.

“But my partner watches porn with group-sex scenes. I don’t want to have group sex…” There is an endless supply of porn that caters to any fetish, curiosity, preference, and tendency imaginable. Sometimes people who watch porn want to act out what they see and sometimes they don’t. There are plenty of queer-identified people who enjoy watching straight porn, but not straight sex. Likewise, there are a lot of people who are into queer porn but aren’t into queer sex.

There are as many reasons for why we like to watch certain types of porn as there are different genres of porn. How will we learn what we want to know about our partners’ reasons if we don’t ask? The answer we get might be a delicious surprise.

Love and Be Loved,
Natalie