Healthy Relationships

Do you find you’re so busy looking after everybody else there’s just no time for you AND to add salt to this wound, no-one seems to really care or consider you?

We all long to have loving healthy connection with friends family and colleagues, so what is that goes awry?

In my blog this month I will touch on a few of the main players in the relationship game and give you some sound knowledge about how to create healthy relationships without having to accommodate others to the exclusion of yourself.

Where unhealthy relationship begins

As we grow in our tribes, we must feel safe, nurtured and loved for who we are. If our tribes big people are behaving in ways where we feel we must keep them happy in order to be safe, nurtured or loved, we became conditioned to meet the needs of others. We can delete, distort and generalise our own needs and maybe not even feel them or notice them anymore. We become very externally focused and loose connection to our inner world.
In the process of not rocking the boat, we can become disconnected from ourselves in order to keep the peace in the tribe.
When our big people were critical or disapproving of us or trying to meet their needs through us, Our inner scales can begin to tip and we can become over or under functioning

Over functioning

This is to become “ the good one” to excel and be the best, at everything we do. Strive for perfection, be in control, to get the approval we are longing for and put ourselves beyond the hurt. We can become rigid, think we are better than everyone else, black and white, unforgiving, harsh and authoritarian.

Under functioning

The other way is to give up. If we tried so hard and still didn’t meet approval. We were never shown the love, support and care we needed, or the pressure was just too much for us to bare. We carry shame as we feel we never measured up to receive acceptance through our achievement. We become boundaryless, judge ourselves, we can develop a victim mentality. We can’t handle pressure and we let people around us down.  We can rebell or withdraw.

This is normal, protective and  unresourceful.

Many of us have had varying degrees of over and under functioning throughout our lives. This is very normal and unhealthy relationships are the result. It’s within relationship we can see, hear ,feel and know ourselves. From here we can take steps towards healing ourselves, and in turn heal our relationships.

A Healthy Relationship

A healthy relationship starts when you realise you are not responsible for other people. You are responsible for you. Our young children are another whole conversation here, which we can have at a later date, however the earlier you can teach them, through love and compassion, to take responsibility for the outcomes they experience in their lives, the easier they will transition into adulthood, with great self esteem and knowing they can handle whatever comes their way.

6 Core Needs

Our 6 core needs are what we come back to when we experience conflict in our lives. We will unconsciously go to great lengths to have these needs met.
They are; certainty, variety (uncertainty) significance ,belonging, growth and contribution.

Certainty is our need for safety and comfort. If we are in pain, physically emotionally mentally or spiritualy the can can be very destructive. So we have an inner compass that will always head us towards comfort.

Uncertainty, is Variety, surprise adventure. Whatever spices up your life.

Significance is attention, knowing you are special and feeling great about yourself

Belonging is love and connection

Growth is momentum and learning. Green and growing not ripe and rotting

Contribution is giving. There’s only so much we can feel within ourselves. When we contribute we can give of our knowledge and these feelings are then magnified and contribute to the good of the whole

Take some time in your journaling to write down what these core needs means to you. Everyone has their own map and I don’t believe there is one clear way of looking at the 6 core needs. I know what they mean to me and when there is conflict in my life it serves me to come back to these and to reflect on what I am getting out of the conflict.

Owning our strategy

Everything we do is a strategy to have a need met. I found this so hard to swallow when I first heard this. Now it’s incredibly empowering as I can see how I’m creating my experience of life.

Here’s one scenario from my life that I trust you will be able to relate to.

In my eyes I am always looking for harmony in my family life (controlling, over functioning) I want everyone to be happy (controlling, over functioning) and no- one is allowed to dump their emotional baggage on anyone else (controlling, over functioning) we all have to talk and sort things out (controlling, over functioning).

These would all be great outcomes if they weren’t rules. I am robbing my family of so many core traits and relationship experiences. This comes from my need for certainty. Through these rule I am expecting my family to fulfil my need for certainty. My question now needs to be, How can I meet my own need for certainty? This will allow me to let go of my tight rules, to grow my self esteem, and to live in my own core traits. From this place of me being me, I feel my certainty of self, whatever happens out there I can handle it. I can speak my truth, be authentic, think in the moment and ask my family really great questions to understand what is really going on.

Healthy relationships teach us connection. Unhealthy relationships teach us to protect ourselves.

It all starts with you!

You are the one that creates the healthy relationships around you by being you. You will have to weed a few flowers from your tribal garden, set a few boundaries.
Ultimately, our goal is not to be nice and easy to get on with. Let’s practice and make our goal co-operation, sharing, understanding, listening, waiting for forceful emotions to subside and looking for a win – win situation. This is how we connect.

This month in the Rise and Shine Studio

Libra Energy

This is really exciting and relates to everything I have been speaking about.
We come to the 7th house of the zodiac where we begin to enter into relationship. So far the energies have been intrinsic, allowing us to work on ourselves, now we have opposing signs which calls us out into the world, it’s time to step out into the world and be seen without your masks. To be content with who you are and NEVER apologise for this.

 

Libra /Aries

The clue these 2 opposing signs bring us is that through knowing yourself ( Aries ) you will come to know other ( Libra )

In its highest form Libra energy has the ability to experience duality as wholeness. By knowing its self it can know everything else.

This is the energy we will be working with this month in the Rise and Shine Studio. To know our values, beliefs and what defines us, owning and using our 10 core traits, ( this is what we have been doing the last 6 months) we can meet our own core needs and stop depending on others to meet our needs, this is a great first step towards having healthy relationships.

Through our yoga practice we strengthen and regulate our nervous system so we can begin to bring awareness to our needs and take action to meet them.

Our focus will be our endocrine system, kidneys and lower back. We’ll work to detox body mind and soul coming into spring and each week our spiritual practice will be focusing on a different core need. Taking on the physiology and psychology of each need and making this our new habit.

Week 1 – Certainty
Week 2 – Variety
Week 3 – Significance
Week 4 – Belonging

This is a 4 week program and these are the basic core needs. When you are feeling NQR in your relationships, two or more of these needs will not be being met. This is where we begin as we observe the relationships in our lives and bring curiosity to how we could bring health into them. growth and contribution are our spiritual core needs . We will visit them as we reach the top of our program.

If this blog resonates with you and you would like to explore and grow you core needs then please visit our website and join us in the Rise and Shine Studio.

Namaste,
Madhu.