One Big Relationship
October 20, 2022
When most of us think of relationships, we automatically think of romantic partners. We are in so many relationships that go way beyond that as well.
We're all engaged in a whole bundle of relationships, from romance and family to our relationship with our finances. So it’s super important to take note of… how am I relating to this person/place/ or thing? In this podcast we go through 4 ways to avoid miscommunication and enhance your relationships.
Hi there, come on in. This is Seriously Yourself, the podcast and I'm Ingrid Helander.
Hey, hi there, come on in, how are you? Good to have you with me today, I feel like we have kind of a little bit of a relationship going, what do you say? That's what we're talking about today, relationships. You know, one of the best parts of being a family therapist, marriage and family therapist is that I've gotten to work with so many people, around so many different kinds of relationships, it's been delightful and I still really, really enjoy that aspect of my work, just helping people to restore relationship, understand relationship and most specifically to really grow in relationship to themselves and to others, and that's a lot of what this podcast is about, right?
How do we grow in relationship to ourself and also to the world around us and to everything that we love those we love. So, this month in the seriously yourself community, we've been talking about relationships and the interesting things within talking about relationship is we often think, oh, you know, well I'm not really in a relationship, if I'm not partnered up or married, but of course you are in many relationships. And if you're in, say a married relationship or a partnered relationship, you might feel like, well that's my relationship and it is and it's a big one, but hey, you have many, many kinds of relationships. And I have a notion that often what we bring to our relationships with other parts of our lives, we bring to our primary emotional relationships as well. So it's worth looking at and playing with a little bit and that's what we're gonna do today. So I hope you'll stick around. Let's keep going here. Let's unravel that thread of relationship. Yeah.
So take a breath right now. And I'm gonna mention some things that I think you probably may have a relationship with. And as you hear them, your job, if you so choose, it is just to notice how do these concepts make you feel when you think about yourself, your relationship to this topic, right? That I'm gonna mention and notice your mind, notice what you hear yourself say and notice the feelings in your body. Okay, let's give it a go. It's kind of fun. So number one, your relationship to your family of origin, your relationship to your romantic partners, your relationship to your children. If you have them or to Children. If they're not yours, your relationship to your home, your body, pets or animals in your life, your community, your town, city, county, state, country, Anyone you consider to be "other" in quotes other your possessions, special things you have, you can hold you own, your car, maybe your relationship to money, your own creativity, your spiritual life or spirituality, the earth and the natural world. So what happened? What happened inside you as you were listening and you thought about what's my relationship to this, right? And you can add any relationships that I haven't thought of, right? Maybe fitness or food or a substance, right? You can add anything. And it's quite interesting to notice rather than these parts of our lives just being, there are just being things. But to notice a relationship right? The give and take between us and this part of our lives, right? And really noticing how much we care about it, What difficult feelings come up, you know, constraints in the body that indicate, oh, there's something going on here that probably I should pay attention to. Yeah, all really valid. Worthwhile moments to have as you consider being seriously yourself.
Now, one of the things that I think is important is whenever you're in a relationship right, you really should notice what you bring to it. What preconceived notions, what kinds of energy, what attitudes, right? And opinions you bring to it. So you might be thinking about say your spouse and you would notice, okay, what energy do I bring when I'm with my spouse, thinking about my spouse imagining having a conversation with my spouse. Do I feel safe inside? Do I feel aggressive? Do I feel calm? Do I feel loving? Is my heart open? All those things really matter? The thing to remember in any relationship? And this is like if I had every couple just write this on their foreheads backwards so that when they look in the mirror every morning they would see it. And I mean me too, because this is the hardest one to remember. In all relationships, the only thing you have direct control over is, yep, you got it yourself, right yourself. So we want to change everything about the other person, right? And I I say this as a family therapist who's had, you know, over two decades of experience, no one ever comes in. Well that's not true. Sometimes people come in and they say, you know, I really want to relate better, but then they want to tell you everything that the other person needs to change so that they can relate better to them. And honestly, the change starts inside, right? It starts with you and that is regarding any of these relationships that we mentioned.
I was in a workshop, oh gosh, long time ago. Now, I really don't even know, maybe 2014 2012 could have been 10 years ago and the woman was leading it on the topic of money and her first question was something like, what is your relationship like with your money? And you know, honestly, I had never other than thinking, I hate thinking about money, I hate working with money. You know, don't like the whole thing about it. I had never really thought about that as being a relationship, but it is, it is a relationship, it's how you relate to, right? It's how you get along with, its how you pay attention to. So as you're thinking about this then, remember you have to notice what you bring. You have to notice that you're the one you have control over. That's another point here, I'd like you to notice that if you have a really strong negative agenda which would sound like this has to happen or this has to change or I'm feeling you know what that would feel like, right? Like don't do that if you were talking to someone else or I don't like this about you, right? So this could be your home. I don't like this about you, my home. I don't like this about you, my finances. I don't like this about you, my family of origin. I don't like this about you, my physical surroundings, I don't like this about you, my body. You see how it kind of can apply. So if you have that really strong point opinion perspective, you can have that and it might very well be true, but you have to get some space from it before you bring it to the other because you are not fully yourself when you have a strong, strong agenda that is a part of you that you are feeling sort of dominated by, that is sort of driving the bus. And as I will mention over and over again, when you have a part of you that sort of taken over that part will seek to protect you. But nine times out of 10, it will get you the opposite of what it desires and it will get you what it's trying to save me from.
So say for example, you're feeling like your dad is greedy with you. Like he hasn't been generous with you and you have an agenda, you're gonna set him straight, you're gonna go and you're going to relate to him and you're going to communicate, you know what dad, it's just been wrong. It's not fair and you are selfish and greedy and I don't like it. If you come from that energy, you are probably going to create all kinds of defensiveness in the other person. They're gonna lock up, right? And when someone locks up, do they seem more generous and more greedy? Right? Yeah. You know now you can get that message across but you really have to spend some time with yourself. You have to come down to what what do I really need? What are the feelings under this? So what if he stays greedy with me? Does it really matter? How is it hurting me? What do I need him to understand now? I'm not saying that the person will always understand if you come to them with those deeper feelings. But I know if you come to them with a strong agenda, a negative agenda, they won't, they just can't and I think again you can imply this to other relationships that you have in your life.
The other thing that I think can be really tremendously helpful is the ability for us as people to really observe what's going on. Have you ever watched children learn something? It's so fun to watch them because they just, they'll watch now some will watch actively, right? Like they're gonna use those hands and fingers and try to get in there. But mostly they're observing what is happening around them and they're gonna learn and they're going to get to know everything they're going to get to know well everything that you know now you came to know right? And the best way to do that is by feeling safe and calm and curious enough to just observe without agenda or maybe with a desire, right? Maybe with a hope, a love to get closer to make relationship right with whatever it is. But by observing.
So if say your connection or your relationship to your natural world feels a little wonky, like I really like outside, I'm kind of uncomfortable or you know, I feel like I don't get out there enough and then when I do, I don't know what to do with myself, if I'm walking in the woods, I don't know. If you just find a place to just calmly observe. It comes to you, doesn't it? It comes to you and then you get to witness things that you didn't know or understand before. And it's true of all relationships if you ignore your money, right? If you cast the concept of money and finances aside because it makes you uncomfortable if you can get calm enough to look at your accounts or look at your earnings, look at you know, whatever money symbolizes you, even money in the hand and get curious about it, right? You're gonna change your relationship to that and it'll feel better. Yeah.
So take some time this week and just go over your list. What are you in relationship with and how's it feeling for you? And then you could apply those little notes? You know, am I noticing what I'm bringing? Am I taking direct control moreover myself or wanting to take control over the outside? Do I have a strong negative agenda or opinion that I need to enforce? And can I calmly observe with curiosity. Hope that helps. Hey sending you lots of love, lots of calm, lots of curiosity and really an openness in all relationships. I hope that they feel wonderful for you. Look forward to talking to you again soon. Thanks for stopping by, bye now.
Thank you for joining me for this episode of Seriouslyourself. To help treat yourself well each week, go ahead and subscribe to Seriouslyourself wherever you listen to podcasts, and please share this link with anyone you love who might be seeking a little more truth and delight in their lives.
Hey, hi there, come on in, how are you? Good to have you with me today, I feel like we have kind of a little bit of a relationship going, what do you say? That's what we're talking about today, relationships. You know, one of the best parts of being a family therapist, marriage and family therapist is that I've gotten to work with so many people, around so many different kinds of relationships, it's been delightful and I still really, really enjoy that aspect of my work, just helping people to restore relationship, understand relationship and most specifically to really grow in relationship to themselves and to others, and that's a lot of what this podcast is about, right?
How do we grow in relationship to ourself and also to the world around us and to everything that we love those we love. So, this month in the seriously yourself community, we've been talking about relationships and the interesting things within talking about relationship is we often think, oh, you know, well I'm not really in a relationship, if I'm not partnered up or married, but of course you are in many relationships. And if you're in, say a married relationship or a partnered relationship, you might feel like, well that's my relationship and it is and it's a big one, but hey, you have many, many kinds of relationships. And I have a notion that often what we bring to our relationships with other parts of our lives, we bring to our primary emotional relationships as well. So it's worth looking at and playing with a little bit and that's what we're gonna do today. So I hope you'll stick around. Let's keep going here. Let's unravel that thread of relationship. Yeah.
So take a breath right now. And I'm gonna mention some things that I think you probably may have a relationship with. And as you hear them, your job, if you so choose, it is just to notice how do these concepts make you feel when you think about yourself, your relationship to this topic, right? That I'm gonna mention and notice your mind, notice what you hear yourself say and notice the feelings in your body. Okay, let's give it a go. It's kind of fun. So number one, your relationship to your family of origin, your relationship to your romantic partners, your relationship to your children. If you have them or to Children. If they're not yours, your relationship to your home, your body, pets or animals in your life, your community, your town, city, county, state, country, Anyone you consider to be "other" in quotes other your possessions, special things you have, you can hold you own, your car, maybe your relationship to money, your own creativity, your spiritual life or spirituality, the earth and the natural world. So what happened? What happened inside you as you were listening and you thought about what's my relationship to this, right? And you can add any relationships that I haven't thought of, right? Maybe fitness or food or a substance, right? You can add anything. And it's quite interesting to notice rather than these parts of our lives just being, there are just being things. But to notice a relationship right? The give and take between us and this part of our lives, right? And really noticing how much we care about it, What difficult feelings come up, you know, constraints in the body that indicate, oh, there's something going on here that probably I should pay attention to. Yeah, all really valid. Worthwhile moments to have as you consider being seriously yourself.
Now, one of the things that I think is important is whenever you're in a relationship right, you really should notice what you bring to it. What preconceived notions, what kinds of energy, what attitudes, right? And opinions you bring to it. So you might be thinking about say your spouse and you would notice, okay, what energy do I bring when I'm with my spouse, thinking about my spouse imagining having a conversation with my spouse. Do I feel safe inside? Do I feel aggressive? Do I feel calm? Do I feel loving? Is my heart open? All those things really matter? The thing to remember in any relationship? And this is like if I had every couple just write this on their foreheads backwards so that when they look in the mirror every morning they would see it. And I mean me too, because this is the hardest one to remember. In all relationships, the only thing you have direct control over is, yep, you got it yourself, right yourself. So we want to change everything about the other person, right? And I I say this as a family therapist who's had, you know, over two decades of experience, no one ever comes in. Well that's not true. Sometimes people come in and they say, you know, I really want to relate better, but then they want to tell you everything that the other person needs to change so that they can relate better to them. And honestly, the change starts inside, right? It starts with you and that is regarding any of these relationships that we mentioned.
I was in a workshop, oh gosh, long time ago. Now, I really don't even know, maybe 2014 2012 could have been 10 years ago and the woman was leading it on the topic of money and her first question was something like, what is your relationship like with your money? And you know, honestly, I had never other than thinking, I hate thinking about money, I hate working with money. You know, don't like the whole thing about it. I had never really thought about that as being a relationship, but it is, it is a relationship, it's how you relate to, right? It's how you get along with, its how you pay attention to. So as you're thinking about this then, remember you have to notice what you bring. You have to notice that you're the one you have control over. That's another point here, I'd like you to notice that if you have a really strong negative agenda which would sound like this has to happen or this has to change or I'm feeling you know what that would feel like, right? Like don't do that if you were talking to someone else or I don't like this about you, right? So this could be your home. I don't like this about you, my home. I don't like this about you, my finances. I don't like this about you, my family of origin. I don't like this about you, my physical surroundings, I don't like this about you, my body. You see how it kind of can apply. So if you have that really strong point opinion perspective, you can have that and it might very well be true, but you have to get some space from it before you bring it to the other because you are not fully yourself when you have a strong, strong agenda that is a part of you that you are feeling sort of dominated by, that is sort of driving the bus. And as I will mention over and over again, when you have a part of you that sort of taken over that part will seek to protect you. But nine times out of 10, it will get you the opposite of what it desires and it will get you what it's trying to save me from.
So say for example, you're feeling like your dad is greedy with you. Like he hasn't been generous with you and you have an agenda, you're gonna set him straight, you're gonna go and you're going to relate to him and you're going to communicate, you know what dad, it's just been wrong. It's not fair and you are selfish and greedy and I don't like it. If you come from that energy, you are probably going to create all kinds of defensiveness in the other person. They're gonna lock up, right? And when someone locks up, do they seem more generous and more greedy? Right? Yeah. You know now you can get that message across but you really have to spend some time with yourself. You have to come down to what what do I really need? What are the feelings under this? So what if he stays greedy with me? Does it really matter? How is it hurting me? What do I need him to understand now? I'm not saying that the person will always understand if you come to them with those deeper feelings. But I know if you come to them with a strong agenda, a negative agenda, they won't, they just can't and I think again you can imply this to other relationships that you have in your life.
The other thing that I think can be really tremendously helpful is the ability for us as people to really observe what's going on. Have you ever watched children learn something? It's so fun to watch them because they just, they'll watch now some will watch actively, right? Like they're gonna use those hands and fingers and try to get in there. But mostly they're observing what is happening around them and they're gonna learn and they're going to get to know everything they're going to get to know well everything that you know now you came to know right? And the best way to do that is by feeling safe and calm and curious enough to just observe without agenda or maybe with a desire, right? Maybe with a hope, a love to get closer to make relationship right with whatever it is. But by observing.
So if say your connection or your relationship to your natural world feels a little wonky, like I really like outside, I'm kind of uncomfortable or you know, I feel like I don't get out there enough and then when I do, I don't know what to do with myself, if I'm walking in the woods, I don't know. If you just find a place to just calmly observe. It comes to you, doesn't it? It comes to you and then you get to witness things that you didn't know or understand before. And it's true of all relationships if you ignore your money, right? If you cast the concept of money and finances aside because it makes you uncomfortable if you can get calm enough to look at your accounts or look at your earnings, look at you know, whatever money symbolizes you, even money in the hand and get curious about it, right? You're gonna change your relationship to that and it'll feel better. Yeah.
So take some time this week and just go over your list. What are you in relationship with and how's it feeling for you? And then you could apply those little notes? You know, am I noticing what I'm bringing? Am I taking direct control moreover myself or wanting to take control over the outside? Do I have a strong negative agenda or opinion that I need to enforce? And can I calmly observe with curiosity. Hope that helps. Hey sending you lots of love, lots of calm, lots of curiosity and really an openness in all relationships. I hope that they feel wonderful for you. Look forward to talking to you again soon. Thanks for stopping by, bye now.
Thank you for joining me for this episode of Seriouslyourself. To help treat yourself well each week, go ahead and subscribe to Seriouslyourself wherever you listen to podcasts, and please share this link with anyone you love who might be seeking a little more truth and delight in their lives.
If you just can't get enough and you'd like even more goodness, you can become a part of Seriouslyourself, The Membership Community. You'll receive a monthly magazine, personal gatherings and cool little treats delivered right to your mailbox. Find out more about that on my website: https://ingridyhelanderlmft.com/seriouslyourself-the-membership/.
And thanks to those who make Seriouslyourself special: our wonderful music is Midsummer from the album Flood by the fabulous Joel Helander. Seriouslyourself is produced by Particulate Media, K.O. Myers, Executive Producer. The ideas and inspirations come from beautiful humans like you, that I feel lucky to know. And I'm Ingrid Helander. Take good care of yourself. See you next time.