Humans are social creatures; we crave relationships whether they are romantic or platonic. However, we often struggle with navigating the complexities of these relationships, especially when difficult thoughts or feelings appear to take us hostage.
Unfortunately, many of us didn’t receive healthy love maps from our parents or caregivers whilst growing up that would equip us with the tools to process our feelings in a healthy way. Meaning, many of us were left to fend for ourselves and carry inherited trauma.
You may be totally unaware of this load, until you get into an intimate relationship and suddenly find yourself becoming unexpectedly triggered by seemingly innocuous events.
Everyone experiences distressing feelings at some point, the key is to lean in and learn to navigate them. This is why compatibility is so important when choosing a partner. The more alike we are – the more we mirror each other’s values and personality traits – the less friction we will experience. But, what do we do when conflicts do arise, and we have no obvious map to follow?
The first step to learning how to manage distressing feelings is to take the time to understand ourselves. To start off, we ideally need to understand our nervous system and our attachment history.
As children, we learn how to regulate our nervous system (and ultimately our emotions) through our main parent or caregiver. Those who have worked on, or are working on, their own trauma are able to help their children feel and process uncomfortable emotions without dodging them or becoming overwhelmed. Whereas, those who had families with unresolved trauma have to learn how to regulate their emotions by themselves.
The good news is that even if you didn’t receive the emotional road map you needed as a child, or struggle with intimacy, you can still learn the tools to become more secure in your relationship.
There are several tools we can use to help deal with distressing feelings in the moment. One method is to learn to attune to our bodily sensations – not to control them, but to compassionately and curiously try to understand what it is that we’re feeling.
Feeling are just feelings. They won’t kill you, and the more you push them down, the more they’ll pop up when you least expect them.
When we experience uncomfortable emotions, where is it that we can physically feel them? What sensations can we feel? Allow yourself to feel this tension and try describing it. Then, try identifying what emotion you’re experiencing. Name it (the emotion) to tame it.
Once you notice the area of tension, try and soften that area. You might do this with a deep breath, a change in posture, a sigh, a movement of your body and limbs or other somatic-based exercises. This process may be challenging at first (much like algebra at school) but it will get easier the more you practice (also kind of like algebra). If you find this overwhelming, you can allow yourself to switch between the uncomfortable emotion and then a healthy distraction to build up a tolerance. Apps such as Headspace or Smiling Mind can be helpful with practicing this method.
Another tool is to learn to expand our view of what we perceive is going on in our relationship. Sometimes talking to an objective, loving friend can help you achieve this. When we zero in on what we perceive is going on, or only on the story we are telling ourselves, we can easily skew our vision and see what our fears want us to see. Without taking a calm step back to consider other pieces of the puzzle, we can easily miss important information that could show us what’s really going on.
For instance, even though you may feel triggered by a certain event or occurrence in your relationship, the emotional weight that the trigger carries are often influenced by past traumas, and make the issue seem bigger than it really is. For example, you may get particularly frustrated when your partner doesn’t stay in touch when they’re out with friends, but your trust issues may stem from unfaithful past partners. When we can explore this and recognise our past wounds that still play a role in our current lives, we’re on the path to healing.
By practicing these steps when difficult emotions come up, we can start to regulate the sensations and emotions we feel in order to move to a calmer, more connected state. Once there, we can then look at what we’ve just experienced in our relationship with a clearer mind (less anxious and less foggy) and have the capacity to work through repairing the wound in order to build a deeper connection.
Guest post by Sharon Draper, eharmony psychologist.
