When we are looking to create change, uplevel, and make a move in our relationship and our life, we might find that we don’t know where to start. Or that we have tried all the things we know and ran out of ideas and so are feeling hopeless. Or that we feel so stuck we want to give up. Or that we know what we have to do but are too scared to take a first step or an action towards making a change. All this is part of the human experience when we are trying to better our situation, create what we desire and continue to evolve to the best version of ourselves…
But not to fret, even though this is part of the human experience, it doesn’t mean that we have to endure additional suffering. It doesn’t have to be hard at the end of the day.
If we were to actually fully own ourselves and not our partner or others, if we stayed in our circle. If we focused on honoring ourselves, our own evolution and growth, and how we show up to our relationship and our life instead of using excuses, victimizing ourselves and blaming others. We’d truly be empowered and able to create what we desire in all areas of our life…
What if we were to focus on keeping our side of the street clean… On showing up with our best self- resourced, self-regulated and soothed, boundaried, compassionate, attuned and kind and generous. Can you image how fast your interactions would shift? How fast your relationship would uplevel? I can, I see it day in and day out not only in my own relationship but in countless others with the couple therapy work we do.
What is some of the work to do?
~ Declutter your relationship and life perspective- clean up distorted thinking ~ Clear, deconstruct and deprogram patterns- heal and release old wounds and stuck emotions ~ Detox from defensive and reactive mechanisms- upgrade coping mechanisms and self-regulation ~ Reset stories, scripts and narratives- replace the victim with a victor mindset ~ Clean up your approach to your partner and your circumstances- try different tactics, skills and tools
When you let go of the old, the hurts, wounds, patterns, practices, habits, characteristics, and such, you create space to become more who you are- your better version of you, creating a refresh for the new to immerge in all areas of your life…
Here is to a replenishing and shifting refresh and to all the newness!
In today’s podcast episode, I have a lovely and fun conversation with Cinthia Hiett, also a relationship expert, where we discuss toxic interactions in relationship, dealing with an immature spouse or an immature partner, what codependency looks like in relationship and in the world, how to set boundaries, growing ourselves up and dealing with our inner child, and so much more.
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?
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.
As we are entering the season of cleaning, decluttering, cleansing, clearing, and detoxing for a refresh and to create space for newness, for a rebirth, we are faced with the choice of how much, if at all, we play with this. It is up to us how we choose to do our Journey. Are we proactive and victors, or are we passive and victims in our relationship and our life… Whatever our usual, we are still faced with a choice. If you are usually passive, here is a chance to step up your game.
And let me tell you, we can play full out or simply select an area to focus on and go about it gently. Whatever our style of doing things, we can honor that if that serves us or we can choose to change even that if we are looking to really uplevel our relationship and our life…
Usually how we do anything is how we do everything…
But we can empower ourselves and start making different choices. We can take more ownership and choose to do things differently, to change habits, to deprogram, to become our best self, the best partner, and the best human we can…
We can choose to stop being who we usually are (a collection of habits and patterns…) or at least relieve the parts that no longer serve us to uplevel ourselves. Things we’d address include our sensitivities, pet-peeves, coping mechanisms, defenses, reactions, and anything else that’s our go to…
Here is our chance to get rid of what we no longer want, what doesn’t work, what gets in our way and holds us back, what numbs, mutes, covers and snuffs us out… Anything that gets in the way of our authenticity, and our ability to be who we truly are…
We might have done a good amount of clearing (deprogramming and healing) already but have a bit more to do, or we might have not even started getting our house in order… This is where we get to choose how much we’ll tackle and where we want to focus.
Areas to focus on include but are not exclusive to:
We might not even know where to start, if we even want to, and never mind choosing how much to do. The whole thing might feel overwhelming.
Which brings me to what I want to offer today, and that is to check-in with yourself about this. Not to impetuously decide on something, as a reaction, from ego, or from the top of your head. Give yourself a chance to really get in touch with what investment would make the most sense for you. Where do you want to place your focus and energy to most move the needle forward.
To that end, a great solution for this is to practice Sitting in Silence…
Sitting in silence promotes:
Relaxation and stress relief
Calm and inner peace
Brain development
Physical healing
Mental health
Processing
Concentration and focus
Productivity
Learning
Self-awareness
Intuition
Creativity
Patience
Mindfulness
Sleep
As you get all these benefits, you’ll have a greater sense of where you need to place your focus and energy. You’ll know what areas need to be addressed first so you can leverage them for better and faster results, and ease…
And most importantly you’ll be doing the resourcing, deprogramming, and healing to begin with. You can’t go wrong! You’ll be already doing what you want to do before you even start doing it. Bam!
To draw the benefits of sitting in silence to support your refresh and help you create space for the new, be proactive about adding this to your daily routine… Put your devise away for a few minutes, and gift yourself this refresh for newness.
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?
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.
Sometimes we might get cranky, moody, impatient, and easily annoyed, and want to bite someone’s head off. Have you ever stopped to consider what is happening for you when you feel this way? You can probably guess that you are not well resourced, that you are running on empty.
Therefore, you don’t have much bandwidth to be tolerant, patient, understanding, flexible, compassionate, giving, nurturing, and loving. But did you know that we can fill our tank by being in Connection?
At my last yoga class, the instructor was so tuned in… She actually made reference to this concept. She said something to the effect of, We get cranky when we need connection. 🤯 I was so excited to hear this and other beautiful golden nuggets she had to offer. Inspiration and affirmation come in all shapes and when least expect it.
I teach this concept to our couples:
We don’t get annoyed with our partner’s imperfections when we feel connected.
When partners report their partner is really getting on their nerves, or that becomes apparent simply by how they share about how they are doing, it becomes obvious how disconnected they might be feeling…
Partners that are feeling connected get along much better. The little things don’t annoy them, they are more able to give grace, to focus on the positive, and to be more compassionate and generous.
But it is challenging to feel connected to our partner when we choose to look at them in a negative light, when we get in their circle (and become codependent), and our focus is “what about me?”
It is challenging to connect with our partner when we are being messy in how we show up to our interactions, and the rest of our lives…
So, this might seem like a Catch22. We need to feel connected to let go of annoyances, but we can’t connect because there are annoyances… Putting this concept together in this way, or having this logic or mindset, doesn’t serve us.
There is a better way of putting this together. We have the power to choose how we interpret things, what meaning we assign things, how we respond, how we show up, how we feel, what we focus on, and so on…
The empowered state allows us to see our partner with imperfections and all, and still think they are awesome. And still want to be with them. And still feel connected…
I get that this is difficult to do when we are running on empty… The littlest of things can grate on us. Some partners expect to get all their needs met through their partner. This is really a toll order and an unrealistic expectation… Something to be revisited immediately…
Therefore, it’s super important to replenish ourselves, to fill our tank, outside of our partner…
When we are resourced, we have more bandwidth that allow us the ability to choose to look at our partner in a much more positive light. When we choose our focus better, we are better able to overlook imperfections and see the Essence of our partner.
It is then much easier to connect with our partner when we don’t focus on their faults but focus on their awesomeness instead… AND, when we are connected it becomes easier to ignore their imperfections and not get annoyed. A beautiful Catch22 after all.
Connection to Ourselves
How do we resource ourselves to be able to do this? The answer still lies in being in Connection… But being in Connection with ourselves, with our Higher Self… The part of us that is one with the Universe, or our Higher Power.
This is the easiest and simplest way to recharge ourselves and fill up our tank! When we are in Connection with our Higher Self, we are plugged in, we are Charged. And, then we can easily connect with our Partner. Voila!
Mindfulness Practice
Our Mindfulness Practice can take on any flavor we desire. Mindfulness is a moment-to-moment awareness of one’s experience without judgement.
The key is to go within and be still. To quiet our mind. To not engage with our usual thoughts and scripts, but just notice them and let them go.
To focus on Being with ourselves – to hear surrounding noises, to feel body sensations, to notice our breathing, to go further within.
To connect with our Core, our Self. To connect with our Essence…
This can be done through meditation and movement like yoga, tai chi, qi gong, walking, cleaning, coloring, knitting, and other repetitive activities where we can transcend our thinking, ego, fear…
APPLICATION: Connect with your Self, connect with your Partner, note a deeper Connection…
Make a commitment to Connect with yourself daily…
Embrace a Mindfulness Practice that fits your lifestyle and integrate it into your daily routine.
Take note of how differently you feel when you practice
Take note of how differently you show up when you practice
Take note of how much easier it is to let go of annoyances when you practice
Take note of how much easier it is to connect with your partner when you practice
Take note of how you don’t even notice annoyances when you feel connected with your partner…
Connection is a goal to strive for daily…
Wishing you much joy, connection and love today and always…
With Much Love & Light!
Copyright (c) 2021 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
Most relationships have to endure a history of trauma experienced by one or both partners and a current trauma(s).
Traumas include abandonment, neglect, abuse, rejection, control, accidents, assaults/attacks, catastrophes, infidelity, infertility, loss, relocation, birthing and becoming parents, substance abuse, chronic illness, eating disorders, depression, extreme emotionality, obsessions, PTSD, unemployment, disability. Some of these are symptoms of a past trauma, but when experienced in the present they create a current trauma to the relationship.
As partners experience their relationship and each other, they are affected by what is going on with each other. Partner’s personality, coping, expectations, visions, perceptions, needs who they are as people is largely composed and influenced by their history, and current context. Therefore, what each brings to the table has an impact on the nature of the relationship and therefore on the satisfaction quotient of the relationship.
When partners have unresolved past traumas, not only do these influence who they are as people and what they bring to the relationship, but they are bound to be symptomatic. These two factors are major sources of stress, tension, friction, and conflict in relationships.
Partners with unresolved traumas are easily triggered and not fully present in their life and relationship. They also have a host of symptoms and additional stressors that manifest as a result. The current relationship keeps getting hit.
These are the couples that appear to walk around with a black cloud over their head when anything happens to them. They go from one problem to the next, from one crisis to another. The reason for this is that their inherent make-up, coping and relating are crooked attracting negativity and creating situations that are more of the same. They are in a negative cycle that is difficult to break away from.
When one of the partners is the one that is the most symptomatic, it doesn’t mean that the other partner is any less traumatized. It takes two individuals to have a relationship however that relationship turns out. Here the saying, It takes one to know one, fits well. Partners collude with each other to create their reality and their current context.
When one partner is having a real difficult time and appears to be carrying the brunt of symptoms (is less well functioning), this is a sign of unresolved past traumas and a sign for the need to have things change in the current relationship so that it is healing. Remember, our current relationship is a venue to our healing past wounds and becoming whole.
If one or both partners are not doing well, they are not utilizing the relationship well to serve its purpose.
Here is the opportunity to do something different. The signs are there it is time for a change!!
Happy Changing!!!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment
Plan a Talking Date where you each get to share how you are doing and how you’ve been. Together determine what your traumas were and how they are traumatizing your relationship today. Employ acceptance and caring in your discussion. Please don’t use blame or criticism.
Create a safe environment to bring forth areas that might need some looking into. Then, make a commitment to make specific and concrete changes to address and heal your traumas.
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.
Being parented by imperfect parents/caregivers is considered a traumatic experience of childhood in some of the trauma and attachment literature and information I have come across. This includes being abused, abandoned and/or neglected to various degrees.
When trauma is defined in this fashion, it follows that most of us experienced traumatizing childhoods to some extent, and therefore were wounded rowing up. This has all kinds of implications for intimate relationships. Please note that I’m not a trauma or attachment expert, I’m simply integrating some additional concepts into my relationships working knowledge.
In very basic and crude terms, when we grow up in an environment where caregivers are not appropriately and consistently available to us, we learn to fend for ourselves for our emotional and sometimes physical survival and wellbeing. This does not give us a chance to develop the secure base necessary for our healthy development.
Instead, we develop coping, defense, mechanisms that allow us to do the best we can. The result is that our developmental tasks are barely accomplished and so continue our development with limited emotional resources.
To make up for this deficiency and manage our life as we become adults and involved in significant relationships, we continue using our defense mechanisms making them more sophisticated overtime. These can pick up any form: super-achieving, perfectionism, obsessions, compulsions, addictions, depression, anxiety, panic-attacks, and other forms of being over or under involved in our relationship.
This is great news in that we can have a better understanding of why we have some afflictions and how we can get stuck in dissatisfying relating in our relationship. According to relational and other theories, we would pick a partner with whom we can recreate the hurts from childhood.
Some of the reasons we do this are because 1) it is familiar territory so it feels more comfortable than the unknown, 2) to get now from the interactions what we couldn’t get then, and 3) to complete developmental tasks becoming healthier adults.
How do we use this information on our daily interactions? One way to start the healing process is to hold our own from a non-reactive place. When we react to something, become angry or upset, it is a sign that we have been triggered, that our boundaries have been compromised, that we are being hurt in some (old) way.
Therefore, it is our job to identify how we are hurt or how our needs are not being met, and to figure out how to meet them without trampling on someone else.
When we do this, we start to find ourselves, heal ourselves, complete our developmental tasks, develop healthy coping mechanisms, meet our needs, be present for our partner, and accept our partner’s love and nurturing!
Wow! Figure out those hurts and start feeling the love!
Happy Un-Wounding!!!
~ Your MetroRelationship ™ Assignment
Going back to growing up, identify how you were hurt or disappointed by your caregivers. Remember, we were all hurt to some extent. Identify and capture the flavor of the wound that was caused and name the feelings associated with it. Now find similar feelings in the present, in your current relationship. What is your partner’s behavior that engenders these feelings his is how you are triggered.
Translate these feelings into needs.
Create a list of very concrete and specific behaviors that you and/or your partner can do to meet these needs.
Finally, create a plan on how to have these needs met: schedule things in your calendar, hire services, ask your partner for concrete behavior changes or nurturing gifts.
Do this from a non-reactive stance. Keep your cool. Be respectful of your partner’s needs. You don’t have to agree but learn to accept and love each other for who you are.
NOTE: this might be intense work or create ripple effects in your relationship/life that might feel frightening. You don’t have to do this alone, get professional assistance if you feel you are on shaky grounds.
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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Emma K. Viglucci, LMFT has been in the mental health profession in varying capacities for the past 20+ years. She is the Founder and Director of metrorelationship.com a psychotherapy and coaching practice specializing in working with busy professional and entrepreneurial couples who are struggling getting on the same page and feeling connected. The work helps couples create a radiant and successful relationship and meaningful life by becoming a strong partnership and increasing their connection, intimacy, and fun. Emma is the creator of the MetroRelationship™ philosophy and the Successful Relationship Strategy™.
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