How to Reset a Broken Relationship

Relationship rifts are unpleasant, but new research shows how to push reset.

Relationships inevitably involve disappointment and mistakes. In a close relationship, it is highly likely that, at some point or another, one partner will inadvertently offend the other, creating a rift that may seem unfixable. Even small lapses from good harmony can throw things off.
Perhaps you asked your partner to comment on the new prescription sunglasses you just bought, which are, by definition, not returnable. Instead of giving you the rave reviews you were hoping for, your partner comes up with a mocking critique that is unhelpful and insulting to your general level of taste and fashion. Deflated, you walk out the door and try to find a way to cheer yourself up, but the comment penetrates too deeply.
Even in relationships that are not necessarily “close,” there can be disappointments and failures. A healthcare provider fails to address your questions with respect and courtesy, or the customer support representative at the other end of the phone line gives you a snappy comeback to your request for service. You need what you’re trying to get from them, so how can you get over your feelings of betrayal?
The Nature of a Broken Relationship
A newly-published study by University of Toulouse’s Lars Meyer-Waarden and University Jean Moulin Lyon’s William Sabadie (2023) on service breakdowns in the hospitality industry provides an excellent model for understanding what goes on when some type of failure threatens a relationship. In the case of this industry, you can only imagine how many relationships can verge on the brink of destruction. Food is overcooked at restaurants, airline computer systems break down, and hotel rooms are untidy, just to name a few possibilities. Indeed, the authors noted, “because of the ‘people factor,’ service failures in the hospitality sector are inevitable.”
Thinking now about a “people failure” you’ve experienced, what could the company have done to bring you back into the fold? According to the French authors, it all depends on relationship quality (RQ) and strength. On the one hand, you may be more forgiving when you’re basically loyal to a given company or brand. However, countering this may be the greater sense of betrayal when a company you’ve supported for years or decades fails to deliver.
Bringing this back into the sphere of close interpersonal relationships, you can see where there can be useful parallels. It can be helpful to know what to ask for when your partner lets you down; just as useful is knowing what you can do when you’re the one who’s failed.
Testing a Model of Relationship Reparation
In their investigation of reparation efforts by hospitality companies, Meyer-Waarden and Sabadie contrasted offers of refunds vs. vouchers and apologies/offers delivered by phone or in writing. RQ served as the other predictive factor. These effects were contrasted with their impact on customer responses through a sense of perceived justice.
Drawing on past theory and research, the French researchers proposed that this sense of justice would be at the heart of a dismayed consumer’s feelings after being let down; in their words: “perceived justice explains how people react when faced with conflict-laden situations.” You expect, then, that people will treat you fairly, whether it’s your close partner or a service agent on the other end of the phone line. If a relationship is going to be repaired, that sense of justice must be restored.
RQ, in turn, was defined in this study in ways that are perfectly consistent with theories of close relationships; namely, that a relationship’s quality is higher when those involved in it feel satisfied, can trust each other, are committed, expect the relationship to continue, and are willing to invest in it. Like close relationships, too, individuals seek to express their needs and become attached to certain brands.
The authors tested their model by presenting online participants with a scenario in which they received poor service from a restaurant serving them on an important occasion. At “Chez Toni’s,” they had to wait for a table despite having a reservation, received cold meals, and were not treated well by their server. The experimental conditions varied by the length of the relationship (how many times they were told they had eaten there before), the amount of reparation, and the nature of the contact in which the restaurant manager offered the reparation.
To measure perceived justice, the research team asked participants to rate whether the restaurant's response was just, balanced, and appropriate. Measures of RQ included ratings of satisfaction, trust, and loyalty intention.
The findings supported the study's overall framework in that high RQ predicted the extent to which reparation efforts on the part of the restaurant worked to restore loyalty. Customers who valued their relationship with the restaurant, in general, were more forgiving. However, to ensure complete restoration of loyalty, they also had to perceive that the restaurant manager was willing to go through considerable effort to win them back. As the authors concluded, “It is only when complainants are treated with courtesy and respect through personal phone calls that distributive justice has a positive effect on justice perceptions.”
What’s Needed for Relationship Reparation to Work
From the French study, it is clear the sense of justice is fundamental to a good relationship. When your partner insults your taste, this violates your belief that your partner will treat you respectfully. As the findings suggest, whether you can get over this sense of violation depends on what your partner does next and whether it rises to the level of sufficiently recognizing the harm that’s been done. The apology, in other words, needs to fit the crime both in amount and intensity.
In the case of the sunglasses example, this may seem like a small offense in the larger scheme of things, and your partner may not even be aware of how much it’s hurt you. As the aggrieved party, it would therefore be important for you to communicate your feelings. After doing so, you might want to prepare yourself to accept the reparation your partner offers.
All of this can be reversed, as you might imagine, in case you caused the relationship rift. Being willing to listen to your partner’s feelings of injustice and then offering a sincere apology can help pave the way back to harmony.
To sum up, relationship rifts are unpleasant and inevitable, but they don’t have to be permanent. Knowing how to restore justice can help you leave those rifts behind and strengthen your relationship’s bonds of loyalty and commitment.

reference:
psycholory today

link:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/fulfillment-at-any-age/202304/how-to-reset-a-broken-relationship
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These Feelings Predict Divorce 7 Years Later

New research examines the link between ambivalence and marital satisfaction.

Ambivalence refers to the presence of both positive and negative evaluations of a person or relationship. It is prevalent in close and intimate relationships (e.g., girlfriend/boyfriend, husband/wife).
Ambivalence is associated with significant stress. Why? Perhaps because feeling both love and hate toward a close other causes uncertainty about the stability and future of the relationship.
Could these feelings of doubt and anxiety predict breakup and separation? Yes, according to recent research published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.
The study, by Surjadi et al. concluded that ambivalence is associated with significant marital conflict and is predictive of divorce seven years later.

Investigating Relationship Ambivalence as a Predictor of Divorce
Data used in this research came from a sample of couples with young adult children who had participated in the Iowa Midlife Transition Project (MTP).
These families were initially part of the Iowa Youth and Family Project (IYFP), which included 451 married couples with a child in the seventh grade.
The present investigation used data collected between 1994 (when the children were in the 12th grade) and 2001.
Sample: Three hundred seventy heterosexual couples and their families; mean age of 43 years old for wives and 45 years for husbands; all Caucasian; married for an average of 23 years.
Measures (sample items in parentheses)
Marital Ambivalence: Four items (How often does your spouse make you feel he/she really cares about you?).
Marital conflict: Assessed based on reports from the couples’ adult children (How often would you say your parents argue or disagree with each other?).
Marital satisfaction: Two items asking how happy and satisfied both romantic partners were with the marriage.
Marital instability: The five-item short form of the Marital Instability Index (Have you discussed divorce or separation with a close friend?).
Divorce: Whether the couple separated.

Ambivalence predicts marital conflict and divorce.
Analysis of the data showed:
Shared ambivalence “predicted divorce seven years later through its association with couples’ marital conflict.”
Compared to those who stayed together, “spouses who eventually divorced were more ambivalent toward each other and had greater marital conflict.”
The negative effects of ambivalence were present even in spouses who chose to stay together. Indeed, shared ambivalence correlated with “greater marital conflict and lower couple-level marital satisfaction.”
At the individual level, wives’ and husbands’ own ambivalence (rather than their partners’ or shared ambivalence) was associated with worse assessments of marriage, such as reduced happiness, lower marriage satisfaction, and a greater desire to end the relationship.
These findings agree with the socioemotional selectivity theory, which suggests that as we age, our goals change, and we become more selective.
Specifically, older people pursue:
*fewer future-focused goals (e.g., making new friends)
*more present-focused goals (e.g., meaningful interactions with one’s partner).
Such increased selectivity tends to require disengaging from romantic relationships that are ambivalent and associated with conflict and distress.

Takeaway
Feelings of ambivalence in marriage are predictive of relationship conflict and divorce, and in couples who do not separate, they are predictive of lower happiness and marital satisfaction.
Given these findings, it would be wise to screen married clients for ambivalence and, as necessary, provide interventions at the individual and couple levels:
At the individual level, therapists can teach husbands and wives how to identify their own ambivalent feelings and use effective strategies to manage them.
Therapists could address shared ambivalence at the couple level, helping couples become more confident in their shared decision-making.
This is important because there is significant interdependence between how ambivalent husbands and wives report feeling; this may result from spouses reinforcing each other’s views, feelings, and behaviors (e.g., the push-pull dynamic). For instance, one partner becoming ambivalent may push the other partner who was already ambivalent toward ending the relationship.
A third way therapists can help is by teaching couples effective conflict resolution skills since the ability to resolve marital conflicts (e.g., through engaging in positive and cooperative behaviors) predicts marital satisfaction.

reference:
psychology today

link:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/finding-a-new-home/202302/these-feelings-predict-divorce-7-years-later
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How to Talk About Mistakes in a Romantic Relationship

Talking about errors can make a difference in how a couple feels.

When I teach my class on the psychology of close relationships, at some point I get around to talking about the “not so bright and shining” moments that partners have. You know, those moments when someone inevitably takes a wrong turn and does something that’s likely to feel upsetting to their partner. To be clear, even though not all misdeeds are inevitable, it’s a certainty that, generally speaking, an offense of some type or another will happen because we’re all human and everyone makes mistakes.
For instance, perhaps you promised to do your partner a favor and then lost sight of it. Maybe you’re regretting those inconsiderate words you uttered a couple of days ago. Or your partner might have been really opening up to you in a vulnerable way, but you closed up and weren’t listening. No matter whether we’re talking about a mistake that’s more significant or a smaller misstep, stumbles are going to happen in a couple's journey together and, as long as that couple chooses to remain together, it’s healthy and important to be able to repair hurts in an effective way.
This brings us to the question of how couples might be able to fruitfully repair interpersonal wounds. In a recently published study, a team of researchers examined this question as they created a new questionnaire with the idea of “co-rumination” in mind. Co-rumination is “the extended and or recurring discussion of issues in social relationships.” They drew upon past psychological research suggesting that how an individual person thinks about difficult experiences is linked with that person feeling better or worse. More specifically, they referred to two concepts that have been linked to the idea of rumination: Reflection and brooding. Reflection involves thinking about the problem to try and work it out, whereas brooding involves repeating the same types of thoughts about what’s wrong and how upset a person feels, and magnifying the problem.
As you can probably guess, the former is useful and gets you somewhere, and the latter can be harmful, even though it can seem compelling. Although these elements of rumination have been applied to relationships (that is, co-reflection and co-brooding being two sides of co-rumination), the research team pointed out that these ideas haven’t really been used to understand how romantic partners might talk in the wake of a misstep and whether co-reflection and co-brooding may be connected to how the conversation goes.
First, they created and studied a measure of co-rumination and found that it mapped onto three forms of communication: Co-reflection, co-brooding, and co-avoidance. Co-reflection involved trying to reach a shared understanding and address an issue, whereas co-brooding involved focusing on one’s own views and feelings and not making headway on an issue. Co-avoidance involved staying away from the issue altogether. Then, the research team looked at how these three elements were connected with how partners feel after discussions about relationship mistakes. Co-reflection was the only style that was linked with better experiences for partners, such as more dedication to the relationship, more goodwill, and a person’s ability to truly take responsibility and forgive themselves. For co-brooding and co-avoidance, these styles were connected to experiences such as less goodwill, more vindictiveness, less dedication, and less of a capacity to really take responsibility and pardon oneself.
Certainly, no study is perfect. The team correctly highlighted the need for more research with more diverse groups of people. Also, the investigators were right to state that their research doesn’t make it possible to say that co-reflection, co-brooding, or co-avoidance causes a particular outcome, and other studies should clarify the link between how partners talk about relationship errors and what emerges from their conversations. All the same, given that co-reflecting is connected with more beneficial experiences for partners, it’s probably not a bad idea to try it the next time you and your partner are addressing a stumble and hurt feelings.

What could this look like? Based on the team’s research and their questionnaire, here are some possible ideas:
1.Try to really acknowledge, accept, and support how your partner feels (for example, hurt, hopeful, scared, angry, sad, confused).
2.Try to set aside your own position for a moment. Instead, try to really listen to your partner and see if you can understand where they’re coming from.
3.Try to be open and receptive to your partner in the conversation.

reference:
psychology today

link:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/your-future-self/202304/how-to-talk-about-mistakes-in-a-romantic-relationship
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What Does the Term Frenemy Really Mean?

Do you feel like someone might not have your best interests at heart?

A new study published in the Southern Communication Journal offers a succinct definition of a term that has become commonplace in pop culture over the past decade: What it means to be a ‘frenemy.’
“Despite the prevalence of frenemies in popular culture and the significant effect these relationships can have on our lives, frenemy scholarship is limited and contradictory,” says Dr. Jenna Abetz, the lead author of the study. “Developing an in-vivo definition of the frenemy relationship portrays the realities of these relationships as they are lived.”
To land on such a definition, Abetz and her team interviewed 29 adults between the ages of 19 and 62 to get a better sense of how individuals who have had a frenemy define and understand the term.
They found that many of the interviewees shared similar feelings about frenemy relationships, leading the researchers to land on the following definition: “Relationships, often negative, steeped in situational ties and shared social connections that outwardly appear friendly but are fraught with underlying competition, jealousy, or distrust.”
Unlike genuine friendships, the researchers found that frenemy relationships displayed three prominent characteristics:

1.Competitiveness (viewing the other more as a rival to outdo than a friend to support)
2.Jealousy (either in terms of social connections or material possessions)
3.Distrust (a lack of respect and care in the friendship)
The dynamic was described by some interviewees as ‘hot and cold,’ with the frenemy repeatedly giving mixed signals as they shifted between friend-like and foe-like mentalities.
While many of these relationships were found embedded in unavoidable social circles and networks like family, school, and work, some participants stated that frenemy relationships evolved from seemingly true friendships that became pressured due to external circumstances.
Interestingly, having a frenemy was more of a ‘felt’ experience than a verbally defined label. In other words, frenemy relationships have an element of ‘unspokenness’ in them.
This is not to say that frenemy relationships don’t come with their own silver linings. Some interviewees shared positive outcomes amidst the dark cloud of a frenemy relationship.
“For some, the outcome of having a frenemy was better awareness of what they wanted and deserved in a true friendship,” explains Abetz. “Others reflected on those teachable life lessons — and that having a frenemy highlighted future relational red flags for them."
Here are two thoughts shared by interviewees that highlight the positive side of their experience with frenemies:

* “I’m more cautious, I see how they treat others before I get close to them.”
* “You learn how people are and what signs to look out for in a friend. It helps you reconsider all the earlier signs.”
Experience with frenemies or frenemy-like relationships underscores the importance of learning what a good friendship looks and feels like by having experience with a wide range of social relationships. This is especially important for children and adolescents to understand as they learn how to navigate the social world. They need to know that while no friendship is perfect, frenemy dynamics are not genuine friendships and they should not feel compelled to maintain them if there is a clear undercurrent of distrust.
“It is important for parents and educators to be able to assist adolescents in identifying unhealthy relational patterns and how they manifest in friendships,” says Abetz. “While learning how to make and be a friend is one of the central developmental tasks of elementary school, as children age they still need guidance and support navigating challenging friendship dynamics.”
Abetz hopes that her research not only helps people define a somewhat indescribable relationship feeling but that it can be used to teach young adults how to seek out more positive relationships in their own lives.

reference:
psychology today

link:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/social-instincts/202304/what-does-the-term-frenemy-really-mean
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6 Ways to Design for Social Connection and Community

How the built environment can help heal and prevent loneliness.

KEY POINTS
Where we live, work, play, and learn impacts our social health and how connected we are as a society.
As cities invest in infrastructure, paying attention to how they impact loneliness and community well-being can benefit everyone.
Design guidelines that can help you advocate for better design wherever you are include accessibility, nature, and a sense of place.

In a time of hyper-connection and communication, recent surveys find that approximately half of U.S. adults are experiencing loneliness and lacking connection. This can increase risks of premature illness and death at levels comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

For this reason, the U.S. Surgeon General, Vivek Murthy, recently issued a public advisory calling the American people to this “urgent public health issue.” Murthy lists “design the built environment to promote social connection” as a part of the first pillar of his advisory.

Julianne Holt-Lunstad was the scientific chair of Murthy’s report, "Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation." Nearly two years ago, Holt-Lunstad and I published a piece, "Is Your Environment Making You Lonely?" In it, we explored ways to cultivate connection using the built environment, policies, and programming.

Today's post focuses on one of the central themes we discussed then–shared spaces, or what Ray Oldenburg called third places open to all people to gather, such as cafes, parks, and libraries. I discuss why shared space is so essential and offer six design guidelines to help any built environment feel more conducive to fostering social connection.

Six Design Guidelines for Social Health
When I think of design for connection, I often think of the Italian piazzas I visited with my mother after my first year of architecture school. They are open to all people (accessibility), an inviting hub of activity (activation), with warm natural clay bricks and stones, often ivy tracing the walls (nature), with the choice of whether you want to sit in the center by a fountain (choice) perhaps, or under an umbrella on the edges (human scale); and they have a history and sense of place unique to each one (sense of place), carved into the place itself.

Taken together, those make the six design guidelines for social health, below I discuss these in more detail:

Accessibility
Creating places that are inclusive, safe, and walkable (stroller-able, wheelchair friendly, etc.) for the people who will use it is the essential first ingredient. This includes creating libraries, pocket parks, and gathering spaces that are an easy-to-reach part of the local social fabric.

Nature
We are hardwired to be drawn to and soothed by nature, a phenomenon called biophilia. Nature, specifically urban green space, has been linked to reducing loneliness, increasing sociability, and improving mental health. Infusing nature, greenery, and park space into our neighborhoods are essential to getting people outside their homes, lingering with one another.

Activation
Ideal shared spaces are vibrant and have some type of activation. By placing seating, refreshments, and amenities in the path of natural travel and circulation, we can create liveliness through purposeful collisions.

Choice
We each have different set points for our need for simulation or mental rest, and these needs change throughout our days, and lives and based on our tasks or activities. We can customize our space to our needs by providing options and adaptability.

Human Scale
We evolved in community with others, using our space to keep ourselves and the collective safe, so we are naturally drawn to places that provide a sense of scale or fit with our bodies. This includes a preference for edge conditions, such that we’re drawn to booth seating or leaning against the wooden porch railing. This includes creating nodes or nooks within a larger space, such as a front porch, as a welcome place before entering a home or a small waiting area to ease you into your child’s daycare and allow you to bump into other parents.

Sense of Place
A sense of place helps remind us of who we are and what matters to us and fosters a feeling of belonging. This ties to the idea that a place can create a sense of “ambient belonging” about how the built environment signals to others whether or not they are welcome here. The place is imbued with values, culture, and meaning, and a sense of place recognizes that significance.

Reference: Psychology today
Link:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/designed-for-happiness/202305/6-ways-to-design-for-social-connection-and-community
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10 Ways to Tell if Your Relationship Suffers From Burnout

New research suggests what may really be going on in a burned-out relationship.

The feeling that your relationship isn’t going the way you expected it to can make you feel emotionally depleted. A couple generally enters into an intimate partnership with the hope that it will grow and flourish over time. When this doesn’t happen, the resulting disappointment can make you question why you ever got involved with this person in the first place.
Certainly, romantic characterizations of relationships emphasize the idea that couples move into a “happily ever after” state once they’ve decided to commit to each other. Even though you may realize that the reality of a relationship is unlikely to live up to this fantasy, you may still be at least somewhat surprised when the reality deviates even farther from that idealistic scenario.

What Is Relationship Burnout?
You’ve undoubtedly heard of burnout in the context of occupational settings. Burned-out employees feel exhausted and unenthusiastic about their day-to-day job routines, but they may also be plagued by the question of why they entered that particular occupation in the first place. According to a new study by Kharazmi University’s Solaleh Zamani and colleagues (2023), the counterpart in relationships of “marital burnout” occurs when couples realize “the reality of their marriage is not what they expected” (p. 1).
For the sake of generalizing beyond marriage, the term “relationship burnout” will be used here instead. As defined by the Iranian authors, this is a condition reflecting a “myriad of factors” including “emotionally life lost function” in which an individual’s coping strategies have become overwhelmed. The individual suffering from this “profound emotional state” may experience a range of physical reactions such as lethargy and headaches, emotional reactions such as feelings of hopelessness, and a sense of frustration with one’s partner.
The 10-Item Couple Burnout Questionnaire
The Zamani et al. study was intended to examine predictors of relationship burnout, but before turning to its findings, you can first test yourself on your own experience of relationship burnout. Rate yourself on these 10 items (0=never, 7=always) from an earlier study by the late University of the Negev Ayala Malach Pines and colleagues (2011):

When you think about your marriage/intimate relationship overall, how often have you felt:
1.Tired
2.Disappointed with your spouse/intimate partner
3.Hopeless
4.Trapped
5.Helpless
6.Depressed
7.Weak/Sickly
8.Insecure/Like a failure
9.Difficulties sleeping
10.‘‘I’ve had it’’

Who Is Most Prone to Relationship Burnout?
If you’ve diagnosed yourself or your partner as showing signs of burnout (with scores higher than 5 per item), the next question becomes which “myriad” of factors is leading to this unfortunate condition. Zamani et al. propose that those high in the quality of alexithymia, or “without emotional words,” would be very likely candidates. People who show this particular trait find it difficult if not impossible to relate to their partners or even be responsive to them because their emotional life is so empty. Their “deactivating strategies” (p. 4) lead them to tune out instead of connecting when their partners need them the most.
In addition to being poor communication partners, those high in alexithymia may also be characterized, the Kharazmi U. researchers propose, by an insecure attachment style. The qualities of fearing emotional closeness (avoidant) or being afraid of abandonment (anxious) both can impede their ability to grow within their relationship and, as importantly, facilitate the growth of their partner.
A related deficiency, the inability to regulate one’s emotions, could further contribute to relationship burnout. People high in emotional dysregulation would describe themselves as easily getting out of control when they get upset, and they would also state that they are confused about labeling their feelings.
The 216 adults in the Zamani et al. study were recruited through a family psychiatric clinic on the basis of self-identifying as suffering from relationship burnout, and this was confirmed via their scores on the Couple Burnout Questionnaire. Most were over the age of 30 and the majority (71 percent) identified as female. The analyses were conducted on data gathered prior to their entry into an emotion-oriented couples therapy program.
By statistically modeling the predictors of alexithymia scores, the Iranian authors were able to show that, as expected, attachment styles were not the primary influence on this outcome, but had their effect only through the mediational contributions of emotion dysregulation. In other words, emotion regulation had the effect of reducing secure attachment's effects but increasing the effect of insecure attachment's effects on alexithymia.
If emotion dysregulation is the key factor that predicts the alexithymia underlying burnout, the next question becomes how to help couples strengthen their relationship by focusing on emotions. According to emotion-focused therapy, the framework adopted by the Iranian research team, it may be possible to do just that. In this approach, individuals learn to gain better understanding of their experienced emotions and strengthen their emotion regulation. Such a strategy could, Zamani et al. argue, turn insecure into secure attachment.

Rekindling the Burned-Out Romance in Your Relationship
Because attachment style is so often regarded as fixed in early childhood, it may seem difficult to understand how it could be “adjusted,” as Zamani and colleagues propose. Even more to the point, if alexithymia is a trait, is it reasonable to think that it could be changed through intervention? It may also seem like quite an impossible task to turn the burners back on in a relationship that has become depleting.
The Kharazmi U. research team and the therapy clinic with which it is associated provide hope that all of these positive changes are within reason. The steps toward achieving this goal include developing greater awareness and understanding of emotional experiences that occur in the lives of a couple. As they do so, their emotional resilience becomes strengthened.
Turning this into practical steps, the findings suggest that you begin by working with your partner to stop and examine your emotions as they evolve over the course of your daily experiences. Which deeply held insecurities and anxieties are tapped when you get into an argument? Which similarly deep positive emotions do you feel when you and your partner validate each other’s feelings? If one of you feels uncomfortable talking about your emotions, this can become even more of a reason to take on the challenge.
To sum up, although burnout may seem to be an inevitable result of a relationship that has endured over time, the Iranian study suggests that it can be remedied, if not prevented. As you work on identifying and gaining control over your emotions, you will be on the way toward finding fulfillment in enjoying each other’s inner lives.

reference:
psychology today
link:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/fulfillment-at-any-age/202304/10-ways-to-tell-if-your-relationship-suffers-from-burnout
/29 Comments/by
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Why kindness and connection are important to mental health

How can a psychotherapist help someone looking for connection?

One of the main reasons we’re all unfortunately hardwired to struggle as human beings is that two of our central needs often disconnect us from ourselves and others: our safety needs and our reward needs. Safety needs view everything and everyone with a problem-focus while reward needs can cause disconnecting comparisons, competitiveness and feelings of dissatisfaction and frustration. In fact, much of what people bring to therapy – including anxiety, depression, chronic anger, narcissism, addiction, procrastination and stress – can all be seen as both causing and caused by this disconnection. 

When we feel connected, on the other hand, we feel safe, rewarded, alive and fulfilled. Life has meaning and purpose. Whether it’s to ourselves, trusted others, pets, groups, communities, nature or the environment around us, establishing and maintaining connection - which includes the quality of kindness both as its cause and its result - is fundamental to maintaining good mental and physical health. 

 

How can a psychotherapist help someone looking for connection?
To add to our biological tendency to do so, many of us also often disconnect easily due to our childhood experiences in relationships. These can include adverse incidents that happened to us, as well as a lack of genuine love and connection during that time. Because it was relationships that led to these difficulties, if we’re going to be able to connect more later on, we have to experience the quality of relationship we initially needed. 

Good therapy holds the very real potential for such a reparative relationship. The experience of being truly heard and listened to, of trusting someone enough to be vulnerable and say the previously unsayable will help with connection in all areas of life.   

Connection often requires conscious and consistent effort before it becomes the norm and each of its facets can be looked at in therapy. We can focus on how to improve connection with ourselves - including our thoughts, values, beliefs, self-image, body, feelings and behaviours - and with others by exploring areas like boundaries, communication and how we express love and resolve conflict. Looking at the client/therapist relationship itself in real-time can also be valuable here. 

If you’re interested in exploring therapy, then visit our website for helpful advice for those looking for an accredited and registered therapist.

 

Don’t hold on to the wrong connections 
It’s important to remember that nurturing connection and kindness doesn’t mean having to remain connected with others to our detriment. For good reason, our safety needs will be sceptical about striving for connection and kindness with everyone at all times. We all know there are people who are better left untrusted. In fact, disconnecting from another might be the kindest thing we do for ourselves and therapy can be a great place to explore this too. 

Link: https://www.psychotherapy.org.uk/news/why-kindness-and-connection-are-important-to-mental-health/
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A New Hope for Building Your Emotional Intelligence

New research shows the skill that can make you more emotionally intelligent.

Do you ever wonder whether it’s better to show your emotions or to keep them hidden? Perhaps your hairstylist cuts your hair much shorter than you asked for. Do you decide it’s better just to wait till it grows back in (and find a different stylist), or should you let the manager know how infuriated you are? Either strategy has pros and cons, so which is the lesser of the two evils?
According to a recent study by the University of Catania’s Maria Quattropani and colleagues (2022), most situations present two starkly different alternatives for managing your emotions, and it is indeed often hard to know which way to react. The key to healthy adjustment, they argued, isn’t always being right about your choice but being able to see that there is indeed a choice.
They noted that “flexibility in emotion regulation represents a central tenet for overall psychological adjustment” (p. 698). In other words, some situations call for expression, and some for suppression. Even if you take the wrong turn in this dilemma, at least you’re able to see that life often presents more gray than black-and-white areas when it comes to handling your emotions.
Emotional Flexibility and Its Measurement
You might think that all of these choices would depend on the quality of your emotional intelligence. But what if your emotional intelligence isn’t all that high? Are you stuck in an endless loop of constantly saying and doing the wrong thing?
The idea of emotional flexibility can become your saving grace. Even if you don’t top out at the positive end of the emotional intelligence curve, Quattropani et al.’s research suggested using emotional flexibility as your go-to alternative skill.
You can get an idea of what this quality looks like by seeing where you rate on the measure the Italian research team used, the “Flexible Regulation of Emotional Expression” scale, abbreviated as “FREE” (Burton & Bonanno, 2016). To complete this scale, you put yourself into 16 situations that fall into four categories based on the emotion involved in the situation (positive or negative) and your reaction to that emotion (express or conceal). For each, you are to rate yourself from “unable” to “very able” to be even more expressive of how you were feeling.

See how you would do on these four sample items:
Positive-Expressive: You receive a gift from a family member, but it’s a shirt you dislike.
Negative-Expressive: Your friend is telling you about what a terrible day they had.
Positive-Conceal: You are in a training session and see an accidentally funny typo in the presenter’s slideshow.
Negative-Conceal: You are at a social event, and the person you’re talking to frequently spits while they speak.
How did you do? Were you perhaps confused by the positive-negative distinction? The thinking behind this scale is that you are able to use cues from context to decide whether to show or hide your feelings. Thus, someone giving you a shirt you don’t like for a present would be a situation in which you would be expected to show positive emotions even though you don’t feel them.
In the scenario involving the typo, there is a positive emotion that you feel that you need to conceal or else face condemnation from others in the room (even though they may have the same reactions as you do).
Tying Emotional Flexibility to Mental Health
The U. Catania researchers translated FREE items into Italian (and double-checked them for meaning) and administered them to an online sample of 503 adults ages 21 to 72 (average 29 years old), most of whom (85 percent) were female. In addition to the FREE scale, participants completed measures that, combined, assess the trait of emotional intelligence: well-being, self-control, typical emotionality, and sociability. The research team included 12-item standard symptom checklists to assess mental and physical health.
Using a statistical model that allowed them to evaluate each possible predictor of health separately, Quattropani and her associates demonstrated that, consistent with previous emotional intelligence research, those four trait-like qualities predicted positive health outcomes. However, even after taking these scores into account, FREE scores added their predictive value, with enhancement negatively and suppression positively relating to psychological well-being. Thus, less enhancement and more suppression seemed to provide the magic formula for emotional flexibility’s relation to positive outcomes.
Training Your Emotional Flexibility
If you take as your starting point your assessment of your emotional intelligence (honestly appraised) and find that you don’t think you’re all that adept, the Italian findings provide hope that change may be possible. Putting yourself back into those scenarios now, imagine whether it’s good to put on a show of tremendous happiness at a gift you don’t like. Based on these findings, it’s not. This may be because other people can sense that you’re going overboard in your reaction and therefore become offended or because you’re making yourself feel something you don’t.
Conversely, in suppression scenarios, covering up an emotion inappropriate to the situation for different reasons may benefit you in other ways. Your job is to use your emotions to foster good relationships and attend to your psychological health. A small degree of covering up may allow you to accomplish both goals.
Looking at the larger picture, you can now see why the quality of emotional flexibility can be so important. You don’t want to go through life always showing the same emotion or over- or under-expressing your feelings. Gauging how you react to the dual demands of situations and your inner state can help you make up for whatever you lack in your basic emotional intelligence.

To Sum Up
Your route down the pathway to fulfillment is greatly eased by being high in your ability to read people, situations, and your inner state. Practicing the skill of emotional flexibility can help you find the ideal balance as you adapt to life’s many emotional quandaries.

reference:
psychology today

link:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/fulfillment-at-any-age/202303/a-new-hope-for-building-your-emotional-intelligence
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A New Hope for Building Your Emotional Intelligence

New research shows the skill that can make you more emotionally intelligent.

Do you ever wonder whether it’s better to show your emotions or to keep them hidden? Perhaps your hairstylist cuts your hair much shorter than you asked for. Do you decide it’s better just to wait till it grows back in (and find a different stylist), or should you let the manager know how infuriated you are? Either strategy has pros and cons, so which is the lesser of the two evils?
According to a recent study by the University of Catania’s Maria Quattropani and colleagues (2022), most situations present two starkly different alternatives for managing your emotions, and it is indeed often hard to know which way to react. The key to healthy adjustment, they argued, isn’t always being right about your choice but being able to see that there is indeed a choice.
They noted that “flexibility in emotion regulation represents a central tenet for overall psychological adjustment” (p. 698). In other words, some situations call for expression, and some for suppression. Even if you take the wrong turn in this dilemma, at least you’re able to see that life often presents more gray than black-and-white areas when it comes to handling your emotions.
Emotional Flexibility and Its Measurement
You might think that all of these choices would depend on the quality of your emotional intelligence. But what if your emotional intelligence isn’t all that high? Are you stuck in an endless loop of constantly saying and doing the wrong thing?
The idea of emotional flexibility can become your saving grace. Even if you don’t top out at the positive end of the emotional intelligence curve, Quattropani et al.’s research suggested using emotional flexibility as your go-to alternative skill.
You can get an idea of what this quality looks like by seeing where you rate on the measure the Italian research team used, the “Flexible Regulation of Emotional Expression” scale, abbreviated as “FREE” (Burton & Bonanno, 2016). To complete this scale, you put yourself into 16 situations that fall into four categories based on the emotion involved in the situation (positive or negative) and your reaction to that emotion (express or conceal). For each, you are to rate yourself from “unable” to “very able” to be even more expressive of how you were feeling.
See how you would do on these four sample items:

See how you would do on these four sample items:
Positive-Expressive: You receive a gift from a family member, but it’s a shirt you dislike.
Negative-Expressive: Your friend is telling you about what a terrible day they had.
Positive-Conceal: You are in a training session and see an accidentally funny typo in the presenter’s slideshow.
Negative-Conceal: You are at a social event, and the person you’re talking to frequently spits while they speak.

reference:
psychology today

link:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/fulfillment-at-any-age/202303/a-new-hope-for-building-your-emotional-intelligence
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,

behaviors that most shape the future of a relationship”>3 Behaviors That Most Shape the Future of a Relationship

Why Relationships Matter

Love is one of the most profound emotions known to human beings. There are many kinds of love, but many people seek its expression in a romantic relationship with a compatible partner (or partners). For these individuals, romantic relationships comprise one of the most meaningful aspects of life, and are a source of deep fulfillment.

While need for human connection appears to be innate, the ability to form healthy, loving relationships is learned. Some evidence suggests that the ability to form a stable relationship starts to form in infancy, in a child's earliest experiences with a caregiver who reliably meets the infant's needs for food, care, warmth, protection, stimulation, and social contact. Such relationships are not destiny, but they are theorized to establish deeply ingrained patterns of relating to others. The end of a relationship, however, is often a source of great psychological anguish.
How to Build a Healthy Relationship
Maintaining a strong relationship requires constant care and communication, and certain traits have been shown to be especially important for fostering healthy relationships. Each individual should, for starters, feel confident that their partner is willing to devote time and attention to the other. They must both also be committed to accommodating their differences, even as those change over time.
In the 21st century, good relationships are generally marked by emotional and physical fairness, particularly in the distribution of chores necessary to maintain a household. Partners in strong relationships also feel grateful for one another, openly provide and receive affection, and engage in honest discussions about sex.
In good relationships, partners try to afford their partner the benefit of the doubt, which creates a sense of being on the same team. This feeling, maintained over the long term, can help couples overcome the challenges they will inevitably face together.
How to Find Love
Finding a partner with whom to share a life is a wonderful but frequently difficult process. Whether it's conducted online or in-person, the search will likely push an individual into unfamiliar settings to encounter potential partners. To be successful, it is often necessary to go outside of one's comfort zone.

Determining whether a particular person is suitable as a potential mate, and whether a connection reflects temporary infatuation or true love, can challenging, but research suggests that there are revealing clues in behavior.

One possibly counterintuitive indicator of a potential match is one's sense of self. Someone who would make a good partner may push an individual to discover new activities or beliefs that expand their own self-concept. Another early signifier may be stress: Repeatedly interacting with someone whose impression matters deeply to us can fuel anxiety. Other positive indicators include being highly motivated to see the person and investing a significant amount of time, emotion, and energy into the budding relationship
How Relationships Fail
Every relationship represents a leap of faith for at least one partner, and even in the happiest couples, the very traits that once attracted them to each other can eventually become annoyances that drive them apart. Acquiring the skills to make a connection last is hard work, and threats may spring up without notice. In short-term, casual relationships, neither partner may see a truly viable long-term future together, but often only one takes action, in some cases ghosting the other, walking out of their lives with no communication, not even a text.

For some couples, infidelity is both the first and last straw, but a surprising number of relationships survive betrayal, some only to have their connection upended by everyday threats such as a loss of interest in physical intimacy, or a waning of positive feeling in the wake of constant criticism, contempt, or defensiveness. Even staying together for decades is no guarantee that a couple will remain connected: The divorce rate for couples over 50 has doubled since 1990.

Some people can walk away from years of marriage and instantly feel unburdened. For others, the end of a relationship that lasted just a few dates can trigger emotional trauma that lingers for years. However a breakup plays out, it can be a major stressor with an effect on ego and self-esteem that cannot be ignored.

Reference 
Psychology Today
Link:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/basics/relationships
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