From a Psychology Today Article We may give people we love free passes sometimes, but there are some behaviors you might not want to accept in any relationship. Toxic relationship behaviors aren’t just about arguing or jealousy. They can also include more subtle actions that affect the way you see yourself and the world. Identifying which relationship dynamics harm your mental health can help you make decisions and protect yourself.

Signs you’re in a toxic relationship

How to tell if your relationship is toxic starts with awareness. What’s considered toxic in a relationship may depend on many factors, including your culture, how you were raised, and how these behaviors affect you. Some signs that your relationship may be toxic include:

• not feeling safe
• being emotionally and financially dependent on your partner
• feeling unhappy
• walking on eggshells around your partner
• doubting yourself
• not being able to say or do things you wish you could

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From a Psychology Today Article First dates bring up conflicted feelings for a lot of people. There may be nerves, excitement, or even a feeling of dread. Part of what can make the dating process disappointing is that you want a relationship but you end up spending a lot of time with people who ultimately are not compatible with you and don’t want the same things. It’s tough to continue putting yourself out there when you feel like you’re not getting the results you want. This is part of the dating process. However, the more quickly you can determine whether someone is not the right fit, the more quickly you can make room for the right person. The less draining the process is for you, the more fun you will have with it. Although you can’t necessarily determine where a relationship will lead right off the bat, these are some initial red flags that can help you weed out those who are clearly not suitable for you on the first date: Click here to read the full article

From a Psychology Today Article May is Mental Health Awareness Month. As I thought about what to write to promote mental health and resilience, there was no shortage of topics to consider: We are living in turbulent times with a great deal of uncertainty about our personal futures and the future of the world around us. So I decided to write something that would encourage people to take care of themselves and to think about what mental health looks like for them. After all, we struggle with different challenges depending on our circumstances, our relationships, and our desires. We are all fighting different battles at different times in our lives. However, there are ways we can take care of our mental health that we share in common. Doing these things will help you stay focused on staying mentally healthy, strong, and resilient. Click here to read the full article

Originally published at Psychology Today Have you ever felt anxious about an upcoming talk - one whose outcome you can’t predict? One that makes you feel edgy or jittery all day, unable to focus on other things? Maybe you were planning to talk through something difficult with someone important - perhaps the status of your relationship, your reaction to a betrayal, or your apology for breaking a promise. You have to tell a parent that you won’t be able to visit when they want you to. You need to ask your partner to change the way they’ve been treating you. Or maybe it’s much more mundane: Your child got into a fight at school and you need to talk to them, to help them understand what went wrong. No matter what the purpose of the upcoming Big Talk, some things don’t change, and some communication strategies can almost always help. Here are seven basic ideas, elaborated where possible, about how to keep your difficult conversations open, clear, directed, and productive. Read the full article at PsychCentral

Originally published at Psychology Today Gaslighting and stonewalling are two behaviors that can be damaging to relationships, but can be countered with boundaries. The truth is, you or your loved one may very well care about your relationship — and a lot. However, without the proper conflict resolution skills, we can become overwhelmed with emotion. If you don’t know what to do or say in a conflict, you might turn to tactics like stonewalling or gaslighting to cope. Knowing what these behaviors look like can help you work to counter them or set boundaries when you see them in others.

Defining the terms

Stonewalling and gaslighting are two behaviors that may:

• be defense mechanisms
• signal interpersonal aggression
• be ineffective ways of coping
• be a form of manipulation

They can be just one or several of these things at once.

What is stonewalling?

According to the work of relationship researcher Dr. John Gottman, stonewalling is one of the “four horsemen of the apocalypse.” This is a metaphor for communication styles that are damaging to relationships. Read the full article at PsychCentral

Originally published at Psychology Today Anxiety is miserable. And most people reach for a pill or push it away to reduce it. But if we think of anxiety as a signal or as the tip of an iceberg, we can take steps to more permanently ease it. Anxiety tells us deep biological programs called core emotions have been triggered out of conscious awareness. These core emotions are designed by evolution to be felt and expressed. When we push them away, we feel anxiety. Learning about core emotions and how they work in the mind and body is the most important thing we can do to change anxiety. Tools like the Change Triangle guide us to name our core emotions. Emotional conflicts can be more effectively dealt with when we can identify and work with the underlying divergent emotional experiences. What follows is an explanation of two techniques I teach my psychotherapy clients and participants in the Emotions Education 101 class I teach:

Technique #1: Identify both sides of your conflict and speak them in your mind with an "and" instead of a "but." For examples:

I love you AND right now I’m so angry at you that I feel like I hate you. I feel sad AND happy. I am depressed and I know I am lucky in many ways. I am lonely AND I prefer to be alone. Summary: Name and validate when you have anxiety, look for any underlying conflicts, validate each side of the conflict with an "and" instead of a "but." Notice how that feels. Click here to read the full article

Originally published at Psychology Today There is a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson that reads, “It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.” Our best friends take us how we are and love us through it all. And in return, we talk out our problems and often speak from a place of truly wanting the best for each other. This is something most of us have in common: We are capable of good advice for our best friends. This advice might sound like, “You deserve better,” or “Apply for the job; the worst they could say is no.” It might even be as simple as, “Let it go.” So, have you ever noticed that it’s harder to speak so lovingly to yourself? The trouble comes from the negative slant the brain favors. It may seem messed up, but often by being negative your brain is trying to help you. Say you are applying for a job, your brain is actually trying to protect you from feeling disappointment by saying, “Why bother? They won’t hire you.” You don’t apply so you won’t feel sad about not getting the job. Of course, the unfortunate side effect is you end up feeling crappy anyway and lose out on new opportunities. In this example, what would your best friend say? They might remind you of how qualified you are for the job, how much the company would miss out on by not hiring you, and if you don’t get it another job will be lucky to have you. Sounds better! How come it’s so easy to say that to someone else? Well, we wouldn’t have very many friends if we talked to them the way we talk to ourselves. Instead, we learned to be supportive, caring, and encouraging in order to maintain meaningful relationships. Here are five ways to develop positive self-talk and treat yourself like your own best friend. Read the full article

Originally published at PsychCentral.com Gaslighting can cause intense self-doubt, no matter who's doing it. How can you respond to this behavior? Gaslighting is a form of manipulation that can cause you to doubt your memory, opinions, and even your sanity. It's a tactic some people use to gain power and control over others. Romantic relationships aren't the only situations where gaslighting can occur. It can also happen:

• in a parent-child relationship
• in the workplace
• between family members

On a larger scale, political and authoritative figures have been known to gaslight entire societies. Research suggests that gaslighting behaviors can be rooted in gender and social inequalities. It tends to be common in intimate relationships where there's a power imbalance. It often happens gradually, as well. So you might not realize you're dealing with gaslighting until you begin to wonder why you're experiencing so much confusion, anxiety, and low self-esteem. If you've been experiencing gaslighting for a while, you might start to feel depressed, helpless, and indecisive as a result of the manipulation. One thing to remember in this cloud of confusion is that gaslighting is a form of psychological abuse — if you've experienced gaslighting, it's not your fault. And you're not the only one. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Trusted Source suggest that more than 43 million women and 38 million men in the United States have experienced some type of psychological abuse or aggression by an intimate partner. But how can you tell if someone is gaslighting you, and is there a way to confront it?

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Re-posted from an article by Deborah Fox, M.S.W. How to manage difficult emotions may seem counterintuitive to many people. We humans don't like to be uncomfortable or in emotional pain. How many times have you been told or tell yourself the following:

• "buck up."
• "don't wallow."
• "move on." 
• "don't feel sorry for yourself."
• "think of how many others have it worse than you."

Plenty, I'm sure. The conventional wisdom of our culture is full of "think positive thoughts." The problem is that this wisdom doesn't chart the path we need to follow to that end. The answer to managing difficult feelings, we have to feel them before moving on and regaining our optimism and good cheer. This isn't easy. What may become common parlance, "oh, it's a total 2020," meaning a downer, things couldn't get much worse, is indicative of what many of you are experiencing. We are still in the middle of an uncontrolled pandemic, climate change, and political conflict. How can you not feel sad, or worry, or despair some days? Maybe your distress isn't about current times. Perhaps you struggle with a host of other uncomfortable feelings such as feeling unimportant, insecure, or anxious on an ongoing basis. For many people, the stress of what's going on in the world now exacerbates those feelings.

Managing Positive and Negative Feelings.

Our emotional system is not designed to feel positive feelings only and remove negative ones. That would be nice, but it just isn't so. To find our joy in simple pleasures and with those we're most connected to, we also have to feel our way through the tough ones. The key is to build your tolerance for feeling these difficult feelings and turn towards each other for connection and support. We are social creatures, and we need each other to go through the middle of turmoil to come out the other side.  Tuning into these difficult feelings will inevitably make you feel more vulnerable simply because you will not push the discomfort away. This is a challenge because feeling more vulnerable is uncomfortable, too. However, it's in that state of vulnerability that you can truly connect with another human being. You'll feel less alone, and you can walk through these uncertain times together, rather than just coping in separate silos.  There are moments--- milliseconds that you can grab before they slip away. These are the moments when you can identify that you're feeling down, worried, or despairing. When you're trying to "move on" or distract yourself, you'll find yourself feeling more and more blah or irritable---the perfect hiding places for vulnerable feelings. If you succeed in identifying that you're feeling sad or anxious at the moment, sit there with it. "Sitting with it" means naming it, feeling it, and not allowing yourself to prematurely make it go away by distracting yourself or starting an argument with a loved one. You will feel uncomfortable and vulnerable--- take a deep breath and stay there in that feeling. This sitting with the uncomfortable feeling allows you to know what affects you that you lose touch with when you shut down on the feelings.

Uncomfortable Feelings Have a Lifespan. 

It might be five minutes or five hours, and it may come and go. It's sitting with the feelings that allow you to build your tolerance for feeling vulnerable. You build it slowly, bit by bit. The more tolerance you have, then you can allow its life span to run its course. If you distract yourself by grabbing your phone or turning on the TV, it'll just go underground and lie in wait to ruin your mood for days on end.  Sitting with the feeling allows you to express, usually in a way your partner, or a close friend, can hear and empathize. Their ears open when they listen to you speak from that place of vulnerability. Feeling this connection is what can most alleviate the intensity of the discomfort. It won't make the pandemic uncertainties or anything else go away, but it can allow you to feel less alone. Feeling less alone goes a long way to walking through any crisis feeling stronger. Shutting down or arguing happens so easily because it's a momentary relief from the discomfort. The energy of arguing or the numbness of withdrawing doesn't feel great either, but it can be preferable to feeling vulnerable.  If you're already angry or withdrawn, ask yourself, "what else am I feeling, or what was I feeling earlier?" Maybe not immediately, but this question will allow you to pinpoint what feelings are hiding just below the surface. You know you're irritated, but you might be able to identify that you were anxious before you got annoyed. Then you can choose to sit with the anxiety.

Difficult Feelings are a Normal Part of Life. 

This is always true, but these uncertain times are causing tremendous turmoil and challenging our usual coping ways. What's critical is not to allow these feelings to overwhelm us. We're outside of our comfort zone, and we need to grow that zone to go forward and be able to grapple with what comes our way. We can't do it alone. Turning towards one another will serve us well and allow us to come out the other side to experience joyful moments amidst uncertainty.

Originally posted at ImagoRelationshipsWork.com Falling in love and staying in love both require giving a part of yourself away, but healthy love is not demanding or uncompromising.

• Healthy love allows you to be your best self and socialize with colleagues, friends, and family.
• Healthy love is not controlling or dependent.
• Healthy love is ever-changing and growing in subtle ways.
• Positive love encourages and is kind and thoughtful of the other. It is honest and supportive.
• If you are in love with someone who requires you to alter your personality, goals or wants you all to themself, this is not healthy.
• If you are staying in a relationship purely because you are afraid of being alone, this is not real love.
• When either of the partners in a relationship is always controlling or untruthful, this is unhealthy.

In a healthy relationship, communication and honesty are vital players.

There is lots of trust and little room for jealousy. Jealousy is a tricky emotion. It can fool people into thinking - "He must love me because he is jealous." Unless your partner has given you a reason to feel jealous, for example, he/she is a chronic liar, has been caught cheating, you should be able to manage your jealous feelings. It's normal to feel a twinge of jealousy on occasion. If you are experiencing jealousy 24/7, you need to look into the reasons. Often jealousy is a sign of insecurity or lack of knowing and accepting yourself. Healthy love includes loving yourself, as well.

If you are obsessed with the person you love and have no interest in spending time with anyone else, that is not healthy.

Most of us want to spend a good portion of our time with the person we love, yet there needs to be a balance. Each of us needs to cultivate friendships that are healthy, genuine, and interesting. Obsessive love is all-consuming and is based on negative emotions such as fear, jealousy, anxiety. In healthy relationships, you can disagree without fear of the person leaving or retaliating. It is not normal or healthy to feel you have to be agreeable all of the time, or else. Loving another is about the give and take. Lopsided love is unbalanced.

When two healthy people are in love, their relationship does not wholly define them.

You want to be developing yourself, both interior and exterior. If all of your self worth is wrapped up in your relationship, this is not healthy. Partners each bring something to share at the table. If you have neglected yourself, it is time to rediscover who you are as an individual. Develop your likes and passions, give yourself credit, take risks, and make changes that are important to you. “A healthy relationship will never make you give up your friends, your dreams, or your dignity…” Dinkar Kalotra.

Be honest with yourself when it comes to your love relationship.

• Is it healthy, or does it need modifying?
• Is there mutual respect?

Remember, too, that no relationship is perfect. It is often about loving through imperfections and knowing the difference between healthy and unhealthy love.