Successful Relationships Reading Corner
This week, we wrote about how to avoid reacting with blame and anger in your relationships. Here are some of our previous posts on different aspects of this topic.
How to Replace Blame With Honesty in Your Relationships “What I have learned is that, when I have strong responses to interactions in our relationship, it is important for me to look inside myself. It is an opportunity for me to understand myself better and to find out what is happening within me. It gives me a chance to process my feelings and see what is moving me. It also makes it very clear that whatever I am feeling and thinking, it is about me and not about Phil. This stops me from focusing on him, his words or actions.”
How To Avoid Relationship Conflicts With One Little Word “If you stop, what are you stopping? You are stepping away from being reactive in the situation. When you stop, the very first thing you will often find is that you can breathe. In these situations, people often start holding their breath without realizing it. Stopping pulls you into the present and gives you a moment to step back from being drawn into conflict, if that’s where your mind or the other person’s behavior is going. Most people have a variety of responses at the same time to any given situation, especially those that are challenging. Stopping enables you to make a choice of which of your responses represents the value which you want to give your energy to. It is not always possible to do this in the moment, but when you stop before reacting or responding, you get that moment to see what is going on, to breathe, and to bring your thoughts and feelings into the present.”
How to Create Peaceful Relationships by Balancing Your Differences “Besides looking at these differences, another way to handle differences is to look instead at similarities, of which everybody has many: we’re human, we breathe, we eat, we like stories. When you look at what you have in common, the differences don’t vanish, but they move to the corner of your vision….The act of each looking at not only the strengths, but also the goodness of the other, enriches the sense of how much differences add to relationships. The desire for balance in a relationship comes from the intent of goodness toward the other from each party in the relationship, and the application of one’s strengths to that end.”