Loving Myself
Two weekends ago my boyfriend and I went to a Harville Hendrix relationship workshop to gather more tools to relate to each other. It was truly a wonderful experience. Ever since I can remember I have been on a path of self development to achieve the self love necessary to maintain an open heart to create safety for myself and others.
This was one of the first workshops that I have been to that their theories were based on, a relationship with your primary partner was a platform to do your inner child work and you where responsible for your partners safety. Now, I’ve been doing partnership work to heal childhood wounds for a while, but not with the twist that we were responsible for each others safety. What does this mean? I have been taught all my life that I am responsible for my own growth, healing and safety. What I got out of it, wasn’t that your partner is completely responsible for how you feel, but there is a responsibility there.
If you are doing something to your partner that triggers him or her, and touches on one of their childhood wounds and you know that this triggers them, why wouldn’t you make the effort to stop triggering them, showing up differently, so they could heal that wound. This is where the responsibility lays. When we change our behavior around our partners wounds, we aide in the healing process instead of wounding them more by ignoring their needs.
So, with this information, I thought how is this different with our children. The only differnece is we might be the ones creating the wounds in the first place, that they will spend their entire adult years trying to overcome.
The most critical information I got out of the workshop was how to listen, validate and have empathy for my partner and realize he is his own person and he is not me. If we listen to our teens, validate their feelings, and have empathy for them and really get that they are not us, they are their own person on their own journey through life, this behavior alone changes the dynamic of the relationship.
I talk about stepping into your teens reality a lot and validating, having empathy and knowing they are not us, falls right into that area. If I step into someone else’s reality, I have their feelings in consideration, not my own. If we want our teens to grow up with a strong sense of self we have to trust in their ability to make decisions and to know that they are okay. When we validate them and understand how they might feel a certain way, they first of all let down their guard with us, and second learn that their feelings are real.
We want our teens to be confident right? If they aren’t secure in the decisions they make, and the feelings they are having, it is going to be tough for them to feel empowered. So, stepping into their reality for the moment, validating their decisions and feelings, not only helps with their confidence it especially helps with your relationship.
This isn’t to say that you agree with them and condone behavior that isn’t good. It simply means to listen to them and see how they would feel that way. If they aren’t on the defense, they are more likely to be open to your guidance.
We all want to be heard, validated and of course loved in all of our relationships; friendships, partners, and children, this is an amazing gift we can give to our kids and anyone in our life.
Tags: blaming, bossy teens, communicate, confidence, friendship, Harvelle Hendrix, loving yourself, parenting, partnership, unconditional love, wounds
October 12th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
What a wonderful article! So wise and true. Thanks, Debra.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:45 pm
HI Sunny, thanks for the comment.