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!
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.
Let’s face it, there are a lot of reasons to be in a long-term loving romantic relationship. One of which is my absolute favorite- that of utilizing the relationship as a vehicle for evolving ourselves, and as the partnership in our Journey for having our best Human Experience and for creating our Best Life. A tall order, I know… But I love this reason because it places everything that happens in our relationship and in the time we share into a more meaningful context… And, no matter what happens we are in it together for our highest good… Then you can never go wrong! Your relationship can even help you bypass your current ego (your egoic defensive patterns)…
We’ve been doing a lot of work in reprogramming ourselves from all kinds of angles…
What if we take this whole thing to a new level? What if we find a hack to do all this so much easier? What if we transcend our usual experience with a simple shift…?
Now, I’ve touched on this before when I covered doing Identity work… This is that and more…
Creating an Alter Ego…
Our usual ego keeps us stuck and small… It sabotages us… And it takes what feels like a herculean effort to reprogram it and dismantle it… But what if there is a hack in the meantime to help create what we desire?
The hack is creating an Alter Ego… An Alter Ego just completely bypasses our usual patterns! The key is to properly design and intentionally engage our Alter Ego…
ENVISION – Have a vision of a new version of you. A version of you that you want to be, become more… What part of you is usually forgotten, goes unnoticed, can’t be easily tapped into, or you even believe you don’t have, that you’d like to have in your life. What kind of person do you want to be? What dimension would you like to add to yourself?
IDENTIFY – Given the new persona you want to become or add to yourself, what beliefs would that version of you have? What kind of worldview world they have? What kind of feelings would they feel? What kind of preferences would they have about things that are important to you? What personality characteristics would they have and what strengths? How would they approach your partner, relationship, and life differently?
EMBODY – Then, start showing up as this new version of yourself… Embrace this Alter Ego for them to be the new main character of your story, you might even want to give them a name… Show up as them in certain circumstances if that’s where you need them, or as much as possible if they are you 2.0… Tweak your habits and your appearance to match this new persona. You might even want to use a totem of sorts to channel your new you… Wearing non-prescription glasses, a specific piece of jewelry, a scarf or collar, a hat, and the like…
Integrating the New You
As you flesh out this new persona and start embracing it, think about what kind of standards they have, what are their musts and deal breakers, what are their expectations, how do they want to be treated, what kind of boundaries do they have, what values do they have and how do they live by them, how do they treat others, and so on…
Here we want to make sure that the Alter Ego is in alignment with our values and the core of who we are… We are just helping a great part of you come out to play… We are not creating something that doesn’t make sense nor support you and your life… This is an enhanced version of you that normally gets covered up with the muck of your egoic patterns…
We are bypassing our egoic patterns- we are coming out through the back door!
Remember, we are doing this to support you in Becoming the Best You. The you that’s in there and has challenges coming out to play… And, that this version is much more alluring, it’s magnetic, it gets what it wants, it easily manifests your Best Life with its magnificence.
In this version you are the King or Queen of your castle… Treat your partner like the Royal you are, and you’ll get the royal treatment back!
Your relationship is where you get to role play, have a dress rehearsal, and put on the show. Here is where you get to explore, practice, tweak and continue to Become…
Wishing you all the joy, connection and love today and always
With Much Love & Light!
PS: 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) 2023 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.
When we focus on ReParenting ourselves as a reprogramming and healing tool, most often the work is not broken down my Mothering and Fathering… But it is super helpful to identify what we need and give that to ourselves more specifically… With the Mothering comes the Nurturing, with the Fathering comes the Disciplining… If you are feeling alone, neglected and abandoned- you need Mothering… If you are feeling overwhelmed, stressed, unmotivated- you need Fathering… But let’s go deeper today with the stories and limiting beleives playing out in your life that are holding you back from what you desire…
It’s amazing that what we believe informs and creates what we experience… That’s how powerful our thoughts are…
I’m sure you are familiar with thoughts and believes that go something like this: We are not good enough, that we can’t make a difference, that no matter how hard we try we still can’t get what we want, that we’ll always be disappointed, that we have to work hard to make things happen, that we have to do things ourselves if we want them done well, and so on… These come from the Lack, Expectation and Control Ego Patterns…
But there is nothing a little Fathering can’t do to reprogram this thinking and related habits that hold us back from creating the relationship and life we desire…
Give Yourself a Little Fathering
As Fathering has to do with safety, security, stability, structure, routine, and discipline, we can connect these to specific Ego Patterns to better understand what kind of fathering we need to give ourselves…
Safety & Security are related to the Expectation Ego Pattern. Here is where you feel let down, disappointment, and resentment, like you can’t count on others and like they won’t be there for you. Not knowing the status of the relationship, when you’ll connect next, plans, who will take care of what and the like create too much uncertainty. This doesn’t feel safe and so you might become demanding, owning, confrontational and such.
You might want to explore your scripts and believes around safety and security. About being able to count on people, about being able to be vulnerable.
You can reprogram this pattern by adding habits and tactics in your daily routine that provide consistency, reassurance, and connection to create that emotional safety and security…
Stability & Structure are related to the Control Ego Pattern. Here is where you feel overwhelm, stress, and anxiety, and like you have to take care of everything and be the one to make things happen. Not knowing if others will follow through, keep their word, do a good job, or properly show up is just too stressful. This is when you micromanage, are overly involved, become controlling and such.
You might want to explore your scripts and believes around stability and dependability. About being able to let go, about being able to trust.
You can reprogram this pattern by adding habits and tactics in your daily routine that provide sharing, updating and debriefing to create that stability and dependability…
Routine & Discipline are related to the Lack Ego Pattern. Here is where you feel alone, sad, and depressed, and like there is something wrong with you and like things are not good enough. Not knowing how to measure up, how to fix things, and how to get your needs met creates hopelessness. This is when you self-numb, become judgmental, make others wrong, and such.
You might want to explore your scripts and believes around worthiness and personal power. About self-love, about being lovable.
You can reprogram this pattern by adding habits and tactics in your daily routine that are part of a self-love practice, partner-love practice, and gratitude practice to create abundance and personal accountability.
The Actual Reprogramming
Once you explore and clean up your limiting believes and debumk your scripts accordingly, the next piece is to add the habits and tactics into your daily routine, and other cadences, for the actionable part of creating change…
Note, as soon as you implement a new habit, you are automatically targeting your ego pattern… You undermine your ego, dismantle the pattern, with the new behavior…
Sometimes it’s difficult to figure out what the habits and tactics can be implemented to address the patterns… But this doesn’t have to be complicated. You can have your own back here by embracing a 30-Day Challenge that aligns with what you are trying to reprogram…
Personal Development, Relationship Enrichment, creating the relationship we want, creating the life we want, don’t have to require so much effort. We can actually have fun addressing things that might get in the way!
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) 2023 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.
Continuing with the reparenting and reprogramming theme for personal development and relationship enrichment… In May we focus on Mothering, nurturing, caring, meeting needs and emotional reprogramming. In June we focus on Fathering, structuring, stabilizing, shifting mindsets and mental reprogramming.
We do this for our own healing and growth, and to enrich and enhance our relationship. We do our side of the work utilizing our relationship as a playground. And as we go we have the added benefit of creating our strong, radiant and successful relationship… Not too shabby.
But all this can sound too serious and difficult if we let it. We do not need to “work” at these things. We just need to invest our focus and be intentional about Becoming our Best Self, who we really are anyway at the end of the day… And, about nurturing and enriching our relationship… We make this super easy with our online couple therapy.
Reprogramming for Dummies
You don’t necessarily need to do this with a couple therapist or relationship coach. This is highly recommended if you are struggling though. But know that you can effortlessly invest in your relationship by:
~ being intentional
~ taking the high road
~ bringing gratitude, compassion, and grace to your interactions
Integrating targeted tactics, habits, and behaviors into your interactions with your partner, your daily routine (ideal day), and your lifestyle is a way to automate consistently investing in your relationship.
We want to make upgrading ourselves and our relationship as easily and effortlessly as possible. Life is complicated enough without us adding more complexity into the mix.
Embrace Love Practices
To kick off this month, let’s focus on implementing or expanding our Self-Love Practice and our Partner-Love Practice. Let’s continue our emotional reprogramming by nurturing ourselves, our partner and our relationship… This soothing and self- and co-regulation will support the mental reprogramming we’ll be embracing in the coming weeks.
Most importantly, we are learning how to give and receive love… Believe or not this is actually challenging for partners… Because of our upbringing and our wounding, we have developed a myriad of ways of protecting ourselves from our pain and from further pain. Our defense mechanisms shut in our vulnerability, unique brilliance, wholeness, and radiance… We move about as a conglomerate of protective layers…
In our meeting our needs and stretching to meet our partner’s needs, with our Self-Love and Partner-Love Practices, we start shedding these layers and accessing other parts of ourselves. We start becoming more who we really are by allowing our internal radiant Essence to shine through.
The practices help us cultivate giving and receiving love, become more loving, strengthen our connection in love, Be our loving selves- expand our Love Consciousness… Also known as Unity Consciousness, Oneness, and the like. Which is really what we are aspiring for at the end of the day…
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) 2023 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.
Upgrading our programs and reprogramming ourselves has been all the rage… And it makes sense as we are waking up to the fact that we create our own reality… We want to create what we want after all, not something driven by our outdated and misguided programming…
Our programming constitutes of emotional and mental defenses meant to protect us. The problem is that they end up sabotaging our attempts at creating the relationship and life we desire… There are simple ways to change your programming…
Our programming simply developed as we grew up through interactions with our caregivers and the world. We learned what’s acceptable, how to be, how to think, how to look at the world, how to experience love, how to deal with disappointment and so much more through these interactions with our loved ones and by adapting to social norms…
These created patterns in our way of being and how we do our life… They inform everything about us. What we make of our ethnicity, our religion, our gender, and the like including our beliefs, our habits, and all the rest of it. But these are all constructions, We are a construction… This is not who we are…
All the patterns and habits that make up who we are as we usually know ourselves, are all but layers of muck covering the true Essence of who we are. Covering our innocence, our radiance, our joy… This is our true self, our authentic self.
Everything else can be deconstructed and reconstructed… We can reprogram everything…
What to Reprogram
And this is the good news! Because if we feel stuck, if we can’t make the changes we want, if we keep having the same old issues, if we can’t get to the next level and so on, it’s because we have a program that is keeping things just as they are presumably for our own safety…
This means that we can get unstuck and create what we desire by changing our programming…
When it comes to our relationship, we might have all kinds of programs going on about love, affection, intimacy, trust, support, worthiness, and so on… We have belief systems and expectations about these that are deeply ingrained.
There are also programs around who we believe we are, who others are, who our partner is, why we are together, how we should be in relationship, and so on…
And all this impacts how we look at ourselves, at our partner and our interactions- what kind of relationship, and life, we are able to create at the end of the day.
There are a multitude of ways in which we can reprogram ourselves, but I’d like to focus here on one that utilizes our relationship and that helps the relationship in turn. This has to do with Stretching…
We Stretch the spectrum of our characteristics, abilities, strengths, and such to be more inclusive and exhaustive… In other words, we reprogram ourselves for Becoming more whole…
How to Reprogram
We all know that opposites attract. That’s why partners always seem so opposite… One is neat, the other is messy. One likes to save, the other likes to spend. One is outgoing, the other is shy. And so on…
The oppositeness in couples doesn’t just stop at personal characteristics. It also impacts needs and coping and defense mechanisms…
Which in the surface might seem like a formula for disaster, and it can be- ask the many couples that didn’t create their successful relationship. But this is also a blessing, a way for partners to support each other’s evolution…
When partner’s get stuck in their power struggle trying to get their own needs met, and having a challenge also meeting their partner’s seemingly opposing needs, they have to stretch to get there…
It is in that stretching that we have to own other characteristics and strengths, that we might not have known we had, or that we have to develop. It is in that stretching that that we draw from our internal resources. It is in that stretching that we transcend the having to be right for being more compassionate, the micro for the macro, the minutiae for the connection, and such.
When we Stretch in our relationship to meet our partner’s needs, we are actually also growing and evolving ourselves… It’s a Win-Win.
This is the beauty of being in relationship. Our partner is our Life Partner, our Journey Partner. Them and the relationship are a Gift…
Hanging on to how this makes our relationship beautiful as part of our relationship mindset makes all the trials and tribulations actually exciting. Anytime you hit a bump it’s an opportunity for further growth. It’s an opportunity for evolving and becoming more our true Essence… And isn’t this what life is all about? If that’s not a Blessing, I don’t know what is.
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) 2023 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.
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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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