We often hear from clients that the boundaries (or the lack of)  set up by their partners are causing trouble in the relationship. However, did you know that emotional boundaries are a necessary part of being a healthy human being?

We set boundaries to prevent ourselves from being vulnerable, easily hurt, or easily upset. A healthy amount of separation from the intensity of the moment (and the other person) helps us to make decisions and objectively from our own values, not from other people’s pressures.

Dr. Cheryl MacDonald backs this up in “How Self-Love and Boundaries Mix” with an interesting point about those people involved in harmful conflict:

People who feel emotionally vulnerable or those who desperately want to seek approval from others are most susceptible to losing their sense of self because the protection, the “bubble wrap”, their emotional boundary was not noticed, properly set, or communicated. Be cautious about making too many compromises, as the “bubble wrap” can expand to the point of breaking, and may cause people to question their own thoughts, feelings and identity. This questioning leaves a hole in people’s self-esteem. Emotional boundaries are flexible; however they can break under stress …

Boundaries are thus something that each person in a relationship needs, and those boundaries must be properly communicated. Boundaries are defined differently for each person, but it boils down to those things you like and those things you don’t.

When you don’t like something, and you make this clear to your partner and other people, you are setting an emotional boundary. As long as this boundary is set up to keep your self-worth (not push the other person away), this boundary can help you keep up a healthy sense of self. Remember that being in a relationship doesn’t mean becoming one person, but sharing a life. You can still be your own person while also being in a relationship!

You may struggle with emotional boundaries if you were not taught sufficient self-love and independence (essentially, self-love means that you decide how you think about yourself, a form of setting boundaries between your opinions and others’ opinions). Dr. MacDonald points out in her article that:

“If people had a healthy, nurturing childhood, they probably grew up feeling grounded, and learned how to protect their sense of self-love, self-worth and have a sense of feeling internally proud. They learned how to set emotional boundaries, and learned how to say no, because they felt loved as a child. In their childhood experiences, there was no need to scavenge for affection, or try desperately to please, just to gain attention and love.”

What about you? Have you been struggling with emotional boundaries in your relationship? Perhaps you experience the autonomous decision-making of your partner as cold, isolating and feel pushed away? It could be that you need to negotiate better your reciprocal emotional boundaries?  You can talk to us about the boundary problems in your relationship by talking to Dr. Nora, our conflict coach.

Nora Femenia is a well-known coach, conflict solver and trainer, and CEO of Creative Conflict Resolutions, Inc. Visit her blog and sign-up free to connect to her creative conflict solutions, positive suggestions and life-changing coaching sessions, along with blog updates, news, and more! We can begin by you having a complimentary consultation at Conflict Coach, with a plan for action to change your life with new skills included. Just click this link and get started now!

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We talk a lot about managing your differences and learning to see them as opportunities to grow as a couple. Quite often, subjective things like “opposite personalities” are opportunities to express respect and trust, and don’t have to be what breaks the relationship apart. Helping couples in trouble see that is part of why we write this blog.

However, some ask us, are there ever certain qualities that should be avoided (rather than “improved”)?

Sure there are, and that’s always important to remember. Sometimes, recurring conflict in a relationship isn’t caused by not knowing how to handle conflict – it’s caused by toxic personality characteristics.

In an article we found called “Yes, Virginia, Some Mates Really Are Wrong,” this same issue is discussed, and some basic no-no’s are outlined. The first? A partner who refuses to handle their substance abuse:

“An addict’s primary loyalty is not to the relationship, it’s to the addiction,” explains Ken Page. “Active addicts become cheaper versions of themselves and lose integrity or the ability to do the right thing when it’s hard. Those are the very qualities in a partner you need to lean on.” Gamblers fall into the same compulsive camp, with the added twist that their pursuit of the big win typically lands them, sooner or later, into deep debt that threatens the foundations of relationship life.

A partner who repeatedly strays away from the relationship can also destroy trust and intimacy. Like abuse or other forms of control, compulsive cheating is something that you should not have to put up with as a partner. The article also notes some other negative personality characteristics that should be red flags for any relationship:

[C]hronic lying; chronic worrying or neuroticism; emotional overreactivity; proneness to anger; propensity to harbor grudges; low self-esteem; poor impulse control; tendency to aggression; self-orientation rather than an other-orientation. Situations, such as chronic exposure to nonmarital stress in either partner, also have the power to undermine relationships.

If you get to the point where you’re delivering an ultimatum,” says Bradbury, you haven’t been maintaining your relationship properly. “It’s like your car stopping on the side of the road and you say, ‘It just isn’t working anymore’— but you haven’t changed the oil in 10 years.

(See the entire article here)

How about you? Are you managing your partnership properly, or is something more serious going on that’s poisoning your relationship? You can talk to Dr. Nora today, she’s our expert conflict coach. Your first conversation with her is free!

Neil Warner

I’m the “relationship guru,” and my main focus is to increase the quality of love-based relationship experiences. I offer useful strategies on healing a difficult angry relationship with love and compassion. You don’t have to suffer alone in an unhealthy relationship for one more minute. Let us share our tools with you today.You can begin with our passive aggressive system created just for men, at Stop Your Passive Aggression, with a plan for action to change your life with new skills included. Just click this link and get started now!

 

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1) We want to maximize the expression and the experience of interest and joy in our lives and the lives of those around us.

2) We want to minimize the expression of negative feelings of all concerned. Those feelings I will specifically name as: anger, fear, distress, disgust and shame.

3) The way to achieve the goals of # 1 and # 2 is to express ALL FEELING whether they be positive or negative!

4) We do this by educating ourselves and others about the importance of feelings both negative and positive. We develop understandings between us that it is ok to express any type of feeling. We develop articulated rules for doing so.

… Always keep in mind that this can happen to and be expressed by anyone in the room. We need not feel guilty for expressing our suffering if we are not the ill partner. Expressing our suffering lets the other know that their suffering has meaning and is reflected in the other. We all end in recognizing, on a higher level, that to suffer is human and in the end we feel better.

(See the whole article here)

Neil Warner

I’m the “relationship guru,” and my main focus is to increase the quality of love-based relationship experiences. I offer useful strategies on healing a difficult angry relationship with love and compassion. You don’t have to suffer alone in an unhealthy relationship for one more minute. Let us share our tools with you today.You can begin with our passive aggressive system created just for men, at Stop Your Passive Aggression, with a plan for action to change your life with new skills included. Just click this link and get started now!

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What if you could harness them to get what you really want out of life? Dr. Silvan S. Tomkins has suggested through his work that we do the things we do in our lives because of how we feel. That is, we are not all as rational as we thought!

 Our emotions, even when we don’t recognize them or define them consciously, drive us to make decisions and choose actions.To understand this better (perhaps you’re saying, “No, I’m completely rational!”), think about it in this way. Dr. Tomkins states that being interested in something is a feeling or emotion. That interest then motivates you to act or speak.

So, think about the last time you were interested in doing something. Did you come up with that interest in a logical way (reason), or was it a gut instinct/attraction (emotion)?This, in the end, helps us to understand that when we plan out our lives, and live them each day, our deep interests and desires are driving us to act.

 You might think that working a 9 to 5 job is not the result of your emotions, but if you employ your reason, you will probably find that it is: perhaps you are interested in the money, which translates to happiness for you. Perhaps you are interested in the power of one day getting the top position at your company, or the distant possibility of doing something great in the company’s market sector. Or… perhaps you are hiding in a cubicle because you fear that you will fail if you try to do greater things.

 When we are infants and young children, we feel more often than we use cognitive processes (think). Our interests are simple: food, shelter, warmth, play, love… i.e., – HAPPINESS!    Those feelings still drive us (because who doesn’t want to be happy?), but as adults we’re taught to “think logically” and not let emotion rule us. We think you could have the best of both worlds instead of being pulled in opposite directions.

If you put your brain to work, and look deeper for an explanation of what you’re feeling and why, you could end up creating a life plan that actually makes sense to you, that gives you actual fulfillment by pursuing it. Remember, pursuing happiness can be just as rewarding as achieving it!

If you need help getting your emotions to “explain themselves,” you can talk to one of our coaches in a private, one on one phone session.

Nora Femenia is a well known coach, conflict solver and trainer, and CEO of Creative Conflict Resolutions, Inc. Visit her blog and signup free to be connected to her innovative conflict solutions, positive suggestions and life-changing coaching sessions, along with blog updates, news, and more! We can begin by you having a complimentary consultation at Conflict Coach, with a plan for action to change your life with new skills included. Just click this link and get started now!

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The American Management Associationbreaks it down in this way:

1.     ”This is what I think.” (Assertive)
2.     ”This is what I think—you’re an idiot to think otherwise.” (Aggressive)
3.     ”This is what I think, but it’s probably not important to you.” (Passive)

Neil Warner

I’m the “relationship guru,” and my main focus is to increase the quality of love-based relationship experiences. I offer useful strategies on healing a difficult angry relationship with love and compassion.
You don’t have to suffer alone in an unhealthy relationship for one more minute. Let us share our tools with you today.You can begin with our passive aggressive system created just for men, at Stop Your Passive Aggression, with a plan for action to change your life with new skills included. Just click this link and get started now!

 

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According to an article on Live Science by Jennifer Welsh, the part of your brain that deals with memory (the hippocampus) can be damaged during childhood abuse, neglect, and/or maltreatment. The damage seems to occur when exposed to high levels of stress during certain ages. With that damage comes a lower ability to “talk” to other areas of the brain, like the brain’s reward center (dopamine system). In the article, a researcher from Harvard University suggested that this may be why many victims of abuse are at greater risk for depression, drug abuse and mental illness in adulthood.

Read the entire article at Live Science.

These findings are extremely important for telling how the brain reacts to its surroundings – if a child is especially vulnerable to stress-based damage in his/her early years, learning how to interact and deal with conflict in a healthy way can protect your children. If your child is often exposed to loud, explosive fights or is humiliated or embarrassed by punishment techniques, what could the effects be later on in life? This is not to say we’re all turning our children into drug addicts later on – but new research consistently shows us that our brains are always watching and making note of our lives.

Neil Warner

I’m the “relationship guru,” and my main focus is to increase the quality of love-based relationship experiences. I offer useful strategies on healing a difficult angry relationship with love and compassion. You don’t have to suffer alone in an unhealthy relationship for one more minute. Let us share our tools with you today.You can begin with our passive aggressive system created just for men, at Stop Your Passive Aggression, with a plan for action to change your life with new skills included. Just click this link and get started now!

 

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This learned process allows the child to know where the parent is, and how to get close to the parent. With that knowledge, the child can successfully go to the parent during times of distress, discomfort or hunger. Attachment strengthens the relationship the child associates with the parent: a relationship of security and safety, a base from which to build later independence.

It all seems pretty uniform, right? Not after we look at how delicate this sense of security and safety is. During the first few months to the first year of a child’s life, the strength of those secure feelings relies almost solely on how the parent (attachment figure) acts. The parent has to repeat again and again those experience that make the child feel safe – feeding, rocking, playing, etc. It’s like building up muscle – you have to work out the same spot over and over to build strength!

When the parent reinforces this attachment bond, this strength of security, the child can grow up with a better feeling of well-being. This enables them to explore their world with confidence, as well as being self-assured when making new connections with people they don’t know. When a parent doesn’t reinforce this bond, the opposite happens; a child lacks an internal sense of well-being and self-esteem, which leads to lost opportunities in life as well as strained relationships fraught with mistrust.

This latter style of attachment between parent and child is called avoidant, in which both parties avoid closeness and emotional attachment at all costs. The sad part is that parents who are avoidant are often children of avoidant parents themselves – the cycle just continues, with parents, children and grandchildren all behaving in way that they themselves don’t understand the severity of.

Anxious (also called disorganized or ambivalent) attachment is a mix between the two other styles, where the parent behaves in a disorganized way that leads the child to associate intense emotions with fright and disorganization. They grow up suspecting others of foul play or double-intentions, imagining or even creating unreliability in relationships.

We can use our primary attachment, learned in infancy, to analyze how we approach social relationships. Those attachments we make with parents repeat with friends, teachers and later romantic partners, until we are in a cyclic routine that seems to have no source (or end). It just becomes our “way of being.”

Sometimes, we will have clients come to us who feel that the world is basically emotionally barren (avoidant), where finding any measure of love or trust is impossible. Other times, we have clients who feel that the world is chaotic, full of unreliable emotions and two-faced people surround them… (ambivalent).

We truly feel that although the world is what you can make of it, according to this primal attachment model that you received long time ago,  it doesn’t have to be exactly what your parents and past life made you experience. One of the first ways to re-examine your outlook on life (if you need a boost in your career or love life, for example) is to re-examine your attachment style. What is important to see is that our old attachment models determine the amount of trust and intimacy we can get today with our present partners. If those models have so much power, then surely, changing those models out for better ones has huge potential for your personal and marital growth! And we have even the support of neuroplasticity, the brain’s own ability to grow and change,  to be assured that we can change old attachment patterns by rewiring our brain.

Are you concerned about the lack of trust and intimacy in your relationship? Are you afraid this situation will be permanent “for the rest of your life”?  Do you feel you don’t have the confidence and self-esteem needed to make that next big step or decision in your own life? Conflict Coach can help you identify and re-examine your own personal attachment style, in order to re-invent the attachment models your decision-making brain relies on.

Visit Conflict Coach today for a complimentary coaching session!

Neil Warner

I’m the “relationship guru,” and my main focus is to increase the quality of love-based relationship experiences. In this ground-breaking guide I offer useful strategies on healing a difficult angry relationship with love and compassion. You don’t have to stay in an unhealthy relationship one more minute. Let us share our tools with you today. 

We can begin by you having a complimentary consultation, followed with a plan for action to change your life with new skills included. Just click this link and get started now!

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At the heart of the human experience is the need to feel loved, and to feel love for others. This connection in its multiple forms goes to the heart of our own identity. What kind of relationships? Better them to be healthy and meaningful, we wish….But in all cases, we tend to reenact the primal experiences we have had when children, (that is what we know, of course) and so our present relationships duplicate the anxiety and the pain and the difficulty of previous ones.

Here is the core of our situation: If each one of us has such a strong need to give and receive love, what are we doing when we sustain unhealthy connections that prevent and thwart our growth? Why is there so little love in the world?

It has to do with an imbalance between what we can give and what do we need…to keep the flow of connection alive. In healthier family systems, it is more important to be emotionally close, and resolve negative feelings with each other. It is also easy to admit when mistakes are made, feelings are hurt and situations demand a heartfelt apology…

In such a family, keeping well nurtured a member’s self esteem is more important than any single behavior, and each one of the members cares about keeping each other’s healthy feelings. Some individuals could even apologize for hurting the spouse’s feelings even if he believes the other person “should” have known better. One could decide that it is more important to be close to the loved one, than to be right. Educating the children in how do you resolve this right/close issue is usually essential for their future ability to build good relationship.

The primary factor in determining whether there will be trust, goodwill, and emotional closeness in a couple or family group is whether each person is convinced that the other cares not just about his or her own well being, but about the other person’s as well.  There has to be a perception that everybody’s feelings count and need to be taken care of, either them being adult or children.

The more family members have an understanding of the basic conflict style they use, the greater their chance of not acting them out in the relationship in a destructive way. If they know that there is a tendency to shouting, then they can establish ways of reminding each other that “here we care not to shout to each other, because we know how much it hurts.” This kind of shared understanding invites gently each person to take care of his/her own feelings and its management.

Relationships is the real way and a unique opportunity to understand ourselves in a new way, and to discover the best and most noble parts of ourselves. We are as trusting and caring in our lives as our past conflicts have been resolved, and the flow of care for each other has been maintained.

The reverse is also true, however. If we reject taking ownership of our own frustration and negative feelings, and blame the other person for how we feel and respond to her in a violent way, we stop the learning process and end up feeling angry, and often victimized. How we choose to deal with our own painful feelings from our past, as well as negotiate our present relationships, and how much we are able to love and empathize with another needs for love and connection, ultimately determines the outcome of the relationship, as well as our own spiritual and emotional growth.

Nora Femenia is a well known coach, conflict solver and trainer, and CEO of Creative Conflict Resolutions, Inc. Visit her blog and signup free to be connected to her innovative conflict solutions, positive suggestions and life-changing coaching sessions, along with blog updates, news, and more! Go now to Conflict Coach

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What are some rules that we recommend?

Well, for intense emotional issues and conflicts, there are two rules that we think are non-negotiable – you can’t go without them.

• Confrontation is by appointment only. Conflicts can occur at any time, we know. However, there is a time and a place for discussing problems and issues that are bothering us (i.e., McDonalds over lunch is not one of them). All parties should agree to briefly describe the problem, then make plans for when is a good time for all to talk. This can be as simple as saying, “I’d like to talk about what happened just now. Can we speak at home?”
• Everybody has the right to a time-out. Sometimes things get out of control when emotions like anger or fear escalate. Realize that every person has the right to feel overwhelmed, and the right to ask for a break to calm down and recollect. However, it also that person’s responsibility to make clear when you will reconvene (minutes or days later).

Need more ideas about coming up with family rules? It may help to divide into a few categories: rules that keep the conversation constructive, rules to handle disruptive emotions like anger, rules to improve communication, and how-to rules for reaching solutions that please both parties.

Here are some good examples of rules that pertain to the first category – maintaining constructive conflict:

• Confrontation by appointment only – we talked about this one. Just as a reminder, don’t make an appointment to sit down and talk right before bed, work or school.  There should be enough time to both talk out the issue and mentally unwind afterward.
• Optimal location – location has a lot to do with how constructive the confrontation is. A lot of interruptions will impede the flow of ideas, so pick a quiet place. Avoid the bedroom, which should stay associated with peace and rest. A good place to talk about issues is a calm, neutral, pleasing place. Moving while you talk can keep endorphins going at a nice pace, so a park is often a good place to go. If all else fails, phone conversations can remove a physical space that feels threatening.
• Start on a kind foot – Show your desire for mutual respect and peace by taking their hand, offering a gift or compliment, or anything that you feel is appropriate to diminish hostility. Just don’t go overboard into making it seem like a bribe! Your main objective is to show that you are opening the conversation on a sure ground by professing that you want to protect your relationship’s underlying values. In short: you are saying: we want to improve the good relationship we already have…

Need help creating rules for conflict in the other categories, like reaching workplace resolutions? Visit our conflict coach today to receive a free consultation. Coach Nora can send you on your way to a healthy relationship in no time at all!

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