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Metro Relationship

METROPOLITAN MARRIAGE & FAMILY THERAPY, PLLC

Coregulation for upleveling interactions and relationship bliss [Video]

Coregulation for upleveling interactions and relationship bliss [Video]

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It’s been in the air, that partners, especially women, are really feeling disconnected and unsettled in their relationship. They are getting more and more in touch with feeling like something is missing, that there could be more, that just sitting side by side binge watching Netflix while their partner is also on another device, is just not enough to feel emotionally and relationally satisfied with their partner…  This is a wonderful awareness because it can be addressed… As opposed to feeling irritated and aggravated a lot of the time in the presence of their partner. No matter what their partner does, they find fault with it or it doesn’t satisfy… Even their partner’s breathing irks them- literally! Does your partner snore?

Couples don’t need to be fighting or thinking divorce for them to realize that their relationship can use some enrichment… That their relationship can use an upgrade, an upleveling… But of course, they can also be struggling.

Couples get into trouble when they approach their relationship from fear, from ego, from arrogance… Usually one of the partners feels like they do everything for the relationship and their life, and like their partner is the problem- they can’t even breathe properly! And, that they could be doing more…

This is exactly the mindset that creates funky dynamics and that keeps couples feeling stuck or from creating a radiant relationship… When one of the partners is feeling so disconnected, neglected, taken from granted, and the like, they go into control, micromanaging, demanding, critical, and even nasty mode… This makes their partner feel unappreciated, devalued, controlled, small, insignificant, and the like. Which makes them shut down even more and become emotionally, and even physically unavailable. Which in turns triggers the other some more… And so the cycle, loop, dynamic, repeating patterns go…

It is usually the woman who feels the disconnect more and starts this cycle… Of course, it can be said that the man started by not showing up emotionally in the first place… But we have to plant the flag somewhere and it is easier to see it when we observe what is being done, versus what isn’t.

*Now, I said “usually” but the reverse is also true, and I used the genders for simplicity’s sake but please replace them as it fits your relationship. Just know that regardless of gender, the polarities still exist in the relationship in terms of feminine or masculine energy that creates the attraction between the two (both have both but lean more into one). If the binary language is offensive to you, you can translate this further and just suffice to say that there are different energies with opposing needs, they don’t need to be labeled…

The partners keep triggering each other with their relationship overfunctioning (pursuing) and relationship underfunctioning (distancing).

Once the partners pause and recognize that they are dissatisfied and constantly triggering each other, they can now become proactive about creating change in their relationship…

It is super helpful to shift how things are being interpreted- a lot of times the partners assume the worst, feel it’s totally hopeless, and feel like calling it quits. They throw up the baby with the bath water!

When what is needed is different perspective, realignment, and approach:

~ Embrace a Heart-Centered Approach – Move down from the head, logic, ego and fear driven overanalyzing, interpreting, assuming, and knowing best and knowing it all…  Move down to the heart and see and feel the blessings, beauty, joy, gratitude, ease, flow, appreciation, love… Cultivate this, expand it… Fill your heart, enlarge your heart. Connect with your sacred heart…

 ~ Embrace a Higher Estate – When you connect with your heart and lead from your heart life and your relationship become infinitesimally easier… Connect with compassion and unconditional love… Your partner is not perfect, as you are not… Your partner is also on a Journey, as are you… Have some grace for your experiences and really partner up in your great life adventure… 

 ~ Embrace a Higher Living – When you realign as we are saying here, you are automatically in a different reality! Things play out differently, work out better, easier, and smoother for the highest good of all. Life and your relationship become a dream come true… It is not that difficult to become your best self, create your best relationship, and your best life as the end of the day…

Ok, so this is all well and good in concept and philosophically you may be thinking, and asking what that means for the everyday.

Now that I shared the perspective shift for you to embrace, that creates a major shift in and of itself by the way… Let me bring it down to the clinical and practical so you can hang your hat somewhere.

The dynamics get created because of our programming, patterning and conditioning… This is why we address this a lot… We want to deprogram ourselves to get out of the box and into a more authentic, expansive, and loving relationship…

Real down to earth and tangible practices help with this:

*I’ve written about these extensively in the blog and have done some videos as well – feel free to search for selflove practice, connection, reprogramming and the like for more. Though the concepts are not always fully expounded and contextualized know that everything I offer, even the fun and silly things like creating seasonal bucket lists and 30-day challenges, serve a higher purpose and good of all…

~ Self-Love Practice – This practice addresses your inner-child… Meets your needs, nourishes and resources you, and heals you…

~ Partner-Love Practice – This practice addresses your shadows (unknown, hidden, disowned parts of you)… Meets your partner’s needs, delights and resources your partner, and evolves you…

There is so much possibility, gifts, and blessings in there you can play there for eternity. Embrace them as a way of life… Like I like to say, embrace a Relationship Enrichment Lifestyle….

And, for a bonus practice for today that is totally embodied and relational and in real time- CoRegulation:

~ Coregulation Practice – This is a way to use ourselves in the moment to have our partner’s back, each other’s back… It utilizes our nervous system to resonate with our partner’s to influence each other’s estate. When we are resourced and intentional, we can stay calm, grounded, and available in the face of our partner’s reactivity which in turn helps them calm down, get grounded and soothed…  It helps as a calming agent and connecting mechanism in times of distress (and other times as well!). This is a great practice when and for addressing triggers, pain, and stress. 

  • Show up with warmth, calming presence and tone of voice, attunement, eye contact
  • Provide verbal acknowledgement of the other’s distress and experience, put words to it
  • Offer deep breathing or synchronizing breaths, eye contact or eye gazing, and gentle reassuring caring touch (don’t force hugs!)

When partner’s meet their own and each other’s needs, they heal and grow… And change their stuck repeating patterns… They deprogram…

Embracing a coregulation practice is a super loving way to be in relationship and to deepen your connection. Now this addresses what feels like missing in your relationship, and helps with building that connection you crave… Now that’s partnership, cocreation, and Love!

Check out the video version…

 

 

Watch our related videos on our YouTube channel

Get our FREE 1-pg downloadable Codependence Quiz to identify if and how you are impacted by codependence in your relationship- do you love too much?

Wishing you all the joy, connection and love today and always…

With Much Love & Light!

 

PS: Related Articles
What about compassion?
Give the Gift of Understanding and Compassion…
5 Insights for your physical and mental health
Addictions impact mental health and success
Reprogram yourself with self-reparenting
Caring is not just for Mothers!
Mothering Vs Fathering
A simple way to change your programming…
Another simple way to change your programming…
Take off the identity mask you chose for your life
The ultimate tool for outsmarting your ego…
Prevent drama with self-regulation and co-regulation
Embrace the art of self-care for increased self-regulation and resilience
Loving practices for self-regulation and relationship enrichment

 

PSS: Do you need support taking yourself, your relationship, and your life to the next level- actually living a healthy, happy, harmonious and overall abundant life?

Interested in Couple Therapy, Marriage Counseling, Relationship Coaching, Individual Therapy or Support Sessions?

We can help with our private and group memberships:
Success Membership
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Look forward to seeing you inside!

 

   Copyright (c) 2024 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.

 

Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication?
Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include:
Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Couple Strategy™ that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly connection notes in your inbox with Personal Development and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com. 

Have Your Ideal Partner by Creating Balance in Your Relationship

Have Your Ideal Partner by Creating Balance in Your Relationship

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A crippling state in relationships is when partners can’t seem to get each other and get on the same page. Partners struggle with being themselves, seen, accepted, recognized and embraced. I find when couples struggle is because the partners are having a difficult time honoring themselves and each other…

The partners get busy trying to be seen, acknowledged, get their needs met and have their way that they lose sight of the other and shoot themselves in the foot with their approach. They encroach on their partner bringing about the opposite of what they are actually seeking.

Partners bring baggage (wounds, triggers, buttons) and blind spots to their relationship that makes them vulnerable to recreating disappointing patterns. They bring histories laden with poor role modeling and emotional injuries, lack of relational and self management skills, meager relationship and life mindsets, invalidating habits and routines, and a haphazard approach to their relationship.

— It behooves partners to identify what emotional injuries they are carrying around that keeps attracting situations as opportunities to repair and heal… Why be tortured and get smacked upside the head by leaving this to chance? Assertively seek out what is your internal driver and set up a plan to address and heal this. It is time to eradicate this black hole that sucks the life out of your relationship.

— It behooves partners to learn how to effectively participate in their relationship for maximum impact and results. This needs to be a life long investment to always enhance, improve and sharpen their skills – communication, conflict resolution, decision making, breaking patterns, meeting needs, self soothing, containing, risk taking, nurturing, connection, intimacy, dreaming, goal setting and achieving, etc.

— It behooves partners to be intentional about what they allow to rent space in their heads. It is imperative to be mindful about thought processes, thinking habits and scripts, and negative and distorted thinking patterns they allow to ensnare them. Relationships are not logical puzzles to be solved!

— It behooves partners to proactively set up their support, environment, routines, rituals and self care to facilitate a smooth and pleasurable journey.

— It behooves partners to prioritize their partner, mindfully and intentionally give to their partner, stretch to meet their partner’s needs (in the stretch we grow… so we both benefit…), and set up mechanisms to make this effortless.

Partners have strengths they bring to the relationship that complement each other. It is important to capitalize on these as they are part of their attraction and their contribution to the relationship. A lot of times we focus on what we lack, what we need to do better, holes to fill, the stretches we need to make that we end up muting what we actually have to contribute…

For the Pursuer – How do you contain, chill out, let go, trust, continue to be nurturing without becoming a doormat or a martyr? Do embrace your expressiveness, connecting and nurturing know-how.

For the Distancer – How do you take a risk, be vulnerable, express feelings, and partake without losing your voice? Do embrace your practical, logical, and down-to-earth savvy.

When couples struggle they go to extremes using their assets making them a hindrance instead; or they pause or hide them in order to feel more compatible but end up cheating the relationship and their partner of their strengths and attraction…

Find the balance between overpowering and cheating your relationship of your strengths… Go forth honoring your Selves and properly investing in your relationship. Then awesomeness is in-stored for you!

Happy Balancing!

 

~ Your MetroRelationship™ Assignment

Identify a gift or character strength that you have been underutilizing in your relationship.

Gently (re)introduce it into your relating. Invite your partner to do the same.

Be aware of your own and your partner’s resistance in favor of maintaining the status quo…

Add this to your Tool Kit…

 

   Copyright (c) 2016 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.

 

Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication? 

Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: 
Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com. 

 

Are You Codependent in Your Relationship?

Are You Codependent in Your Relationship?

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One version of couples struggling that I come across are couples with partners that are codependent. These are the couples that are stuck in patterns that they can’t seem to break, they have a lot of fighting and drama or complete disconnect (conflict avoiding).

They feel they are behind their peers in terms of professional and relational achievements, and can’t seem to synchronize on handling the business of creating a joint life and getting their needs met.

In these couples the partners show up in two ways:

One is the pursuer (borderline tendencies…) – the one that needs connection and acknowledgement to feel OK.

The other is the distancer (narcissistic tendencies…) – the one that needs more space to be themselves to feel OK.

Note, that nothing in life is so clear cut – there is range on both sides on how this manifests. The couples that struggle the most are the most polarized.

These partners create a loop of pursuing and distancing that creates more stuck patterns and dissatisfaction. They constantly hurt each other, usually not intentionally. Their main focus is to make sure they are OK. Their ego is on overdrive to make sure they are not smothered or swallowed up (for the distancer) and not abandoned or rejected (for the pursuer).

The ego’s approach at making sure we are OK, is to do more of the same and more intensely – nobody ever said the ego is smart… Therefore, if you are a pursuer – to feel OK you pursue even more. If you are a distancer, to feel OK to distance even more… If your partner distances, you pursue. If your partner pursues, you distance. You see how we can get stuck?

One of the pursuer’s main fear is not to be seen, feeling like they don’t exist or count. For the distancer, one main fear is of not being good enough, or feeling small or not measuring up.

The way the partners go about addressing their related needs trigger the other’s fears which engage their ego further (the fear-based approach to relating and life). When the pursuer wants connection and acknowledgement and they don’t get it, they micromanage and criticize to get what they want – which makes the distancer feel not good enough and small like they don’t have a voice or can’t be themselves. 

When the distancer wants space and have a voice and they don’t get it,  they shut down and withdraw and go do their own thing – which makes the pursuer feel abandoned, not wanted and not existent.

And, this creates a mess! Here are two quick tips to start breaking the codependency: 

1 – Own yourself and not your partner! If I got a dollar for every time I say or write that… Mind your beliefs, thinking, feelings, communication, and attitude and behavior… and not your partner’s…

2 – Work your “stretch”. If you are a distancer, your stretch is to feel your feelings, own your voice responsively and respectfully, and not shut down or withdraw – safeguard the connection… If you are a pursuer, your stretch is to contain yourself, self soothe, self regulate and self manage, find ways to stay grounded and engaged, and to be patient and stand still…

When couples focus on changing how they are contributing to their stuckness and invest in stretching and changing their own approach to the relationship and their partner, beautiful things start to happen. I wish this for you. I you happiness , abundance and authenticity upon you!

Happy Stretching!

 

~ Your MetroRelationship™ Assignment

If you are a distancer – find two areas you need to be more vocal on and mindfully share your perspective on them… (this gives you a voice and importance)

If you are a pursuer – find two self care activities to integrate into your routine… (this helps you self soothe and regulate)

Add this to your Tool Kit…

 

   Copyright (c) 2016 Emma K. Viglucci. All rights reserved.

 

Want to Use this Article in Your Own Website or Publication? 

Be our guest! Here is how, you MUST include: 
Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT is the Founder and Director of Metropolitan Marriage & Family Therapy, PLLC, a private practice that specializes in working with couples, she is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and a variety of Successful Couple™ content that assist couples succeed at their relationship and their life. Stay Connected™ with Emma and receive weekly Connection Notes in your inbox with Personal Growth and Relationship Enrichment insights and strategies, visit: www.metrorelationship.com. 

 

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