by tashmcgill | May 7, 2017 | Friendship, Love & Marriage, Mind
He flung out his hand, asking for mine and grasped my wrist in a clumsy sort of embrace.
“You are requirements,” he said. “Don’t go.”
I had simply wondered out loud about leaving the party to go home now the celebrations were in full swing. It was a throwaway question, was I now surplus to requirements, could I go home?
I didn’t mean to be asking for permission, nor did I expect the bolt of acknowledgement that came from his words. He was a friend in need, on the constant precipice of emotional breakdown and I had capacity to meet his need for someone reliable and loyal.
In that moment, I was requirements even though I knew it wouldn’t or couldn’t last. It was a glimpse and reminder of everything this really wasn’t. I wasn’t really requirements, but the idea of me was.
I would come to see this as the summer we settled into one another. From that point forward, his uncertainty of my loyalty became concrete assurance and I was then on, unfaltering in my friendship and support. Later, I came to see this as both the beauty and the sadness of my life. An effortless ability to step into someone’s need and to fulfil their requirements regardless of my own.
The feel of his skin and shape of his shoulders under my fingers became as familiar as that of a child or brother. It was nothing to clasp his hand as we would pray, or to feel the heaviness of his head resting on my shoulder in a hug. It was an easy agreement between friends. In the long days of distress, I could answer his need, a glass of wine and listening ear, mostly.
Truthfully though, you might be requirements for a moment but eventually those requirements will change. Someone who is healing will not always need you in the same way they need you now. Open wounds need tending, but newly formed scar tissue is often best left alone, if you catch my drift.
Being requirements came with boundaries and limits. I gave out of an open hand, whatever my capacity was at the time but I couldn’t give with an open heart because while he needed me to meet requirements, he couldn’t meet mine.
The pieces he needed were still some of the best pieces of me and I could give them without cost but not without sacrifice.
Throwing a dinner party when significant birthday celebrations came around. Holding together a kid’s birthday party while arguments happened in the background. Babysitting at the last-minute or being any kind of company when the night is too long and dark. Laughter and an excuse to re-imagine and explore the world at the best restaurants, on short trips away. A steady, reliable and loyal comrade to be trusted in any kind of gathering or last-minute adventure – those requirements I could meet.
My requirements are quite different. People and friends meaning well have often probed the question, do I just need to be needed? Is that why I’m always the strong friend that people, particularly men, are drawn to until something better comes along?
I don’t need to be needed. I’m a helper but I don’t thrive on being needed. Sometimes a sense of people depending or expecting help from me is the fastest way to build barriers between us. I thrive on helping when I want to help.
Part of learning healthy boundaries as an adult has been choosing when and who to help, particularly when my help is wanted.
Because my requirement is to be wanted. Not a placeholder or simply the one who is available at the time, not taken for granted or a substitute until something better comes along but the one who is wanted.
When someone particularly wants my help or input, I am at my most vulnerable. When men (and women) who ‘need’ my friendship have come along, I have learned through heartache that to be ‘needed’ is not the same as being wanted. Requirements will change. He would have consumed me, as if I was water in the desert if I had not had my eyes wide open. People who are thirsty will do that to each other.
An Oasis for the Thirsty
I am sure I’m not the only one who has a story like this, where you are the one who does the heavy lifting in your relationships. You’re the best girlfriend of your male best friends or the guy your girlfriends all rely on for a man’s opinion. You’re the one whose friendship they can’t live without but really, they can. And I don’t want to be the fill-in girl. To be honest, people will take whatever of yourself you give them and treat you how you teach them to treat you. Sometimes, I feel like an oasis in the desert for the thirsty, but I’m always thirsty myself. We have made a mistaken, secret kind of holiness of being needed.
I’m learning (and still trying to practice) not mistaking vulnerability for intimacy and vice-versa. And somehow learn not to give of myself what they cannot give to me, especially in moments of my vulnerability. It is the loneliest kind of love, requiring self-discipline to temper affection, measure what you can give and withhold that which you do not wish to relinquish. But that is love in boundaries. And it sucks. I don’t believe for a second that we were meant to live in this measured, self-protecting way with each other. But in a world that has forgotten how to live wholeheartedly and honestly with each other, this is the best we have, navigating through the fog.
The scary truth is that being someone’s Girl Friday, someone’s requirements now, may yet be the best intimacy I ever know. So I’m still requirements, when I can be. Still wholehearted, as much as possible. And still wanting to be wanted some day, for someone’s requirements to be me, just me, broken and best.
by tashmcgill | Nov 25, 2016 | Mind, Spirituality
Not done yet: but instead always onwards, upwards and downwards on the journey of life.
This is harder than it sounds. But if there is within you some ache, frustration or desire that will not rest – you are not done yet. Fight for your life, through the pain not against it.
If it hurts, if you cannot numb it with distraction then you are in the graft. The part where your existing roots are weaving with, growing into and assimilating the new, organic life ahead of you.
In a greenhouse, the master gardener painstakingly grafts one plant to another. One stem to a stronger stem, one variety to another. Shaping and bending organic matter to stronger, newer and previously unseen beauty. To do it, there must be wounds, in order to splice new life onto old.
The wounds bring new beauty eventually. Your job is to show up to the bittersweet pain every day for as long as it takes to be made new.
If it’s important, someone – you – will need to bleed for it. Whatever your life looks like. Sometimes your fight to get there will actually look like surrender. Not to futility or hopelessness, but the ache that so often accompanies Hope.
Often, we fight our greatest battles by choosing to relax and embrace the hardest moments until we learn what we need to from them. Nothing is wasted.
Do not fight the pain in your life but don’t magnify it either. Let pain do it’s work in you; a sign of life to come. A message of reminder: you are not done yet.
My dreams, desires and hopes are sometimes so large the corresponding wound feels too deep. But it only lasts a moment, like stepping with bare feet onto a gravel path. I learn to walk, limping, on paths I otherwise would not traverse. I strengthen muscles and stretch new ligaments. Pain accompanies growth.
Do not give up; dear ones. Let your courage rise and fight for your life, found on the gravelly, ascending hill paths. When shaken, find your footing again. Deflated, breathe deep into your lungs and keep walking.
Do not give up, do not fight against the pain; fight with it and through it for your life. Hold onto your graft.
Kia kaha, kia maia, kia manawanui (be strong, courageous, be steadfast and willing).
In times of grafting, I often to return to texts and books that have helped me accept and journey with pain in healthy ways. They may be helpful to you.
Henri Nouwen: the Inner Voice of Love
Richard Rohr: Falling Upward
Hannah Hurnard: Hind’s Feet On High Places
by tashmcgill | Nov 1, 2016 | Culture & Ideas, Health, Mind, Spirituality
“But what if, this time?”, the question echoes in my mind.
The silence in response is the same echoing kind.
I can ask the same question in half a dozen repetitive ways. “Why not, this time, this love, this job, this circumstance?”
I’ve given up on trying to get the question right because I’ve figured out it’s the wrong question to get an answer for. I’m beginning to accept the Universe doesn’t need for me to understand why not, at least not yet. And the day may never come, as so many of us who live with unanswered questions know. If there was an answer to be understood or learned for why my ‘What-Ifs’ have not become ‘What-Is’, I would have found it by now.
I’m not mad about it, just sad about it. It’s Anticipation Sickness, the same illness the ancient prophets and poets wrote of. Hope deferred makes the heart sick but unavoidably, Hope rises and the question, this time just a whisper, echoes again.
“What if, this time?”
An Optimistic Idealist.
We are our own worst enemies at times. A consumption generation collecting toys and experiences, living in a near-constant state of ‘What-Next?’ I, a Futurist and optimistic idealist, am guilty of living always with one eye on the future. It means hope and anticipation of What-Next is constantly simmering away within me, because I wonder if each step is taking me closer to this time, being the exact time my dreams fall within my grasp.
There is a lot of terrible, unhelpful advice available on the subject of dreams.
You have to be bold and grab hold of them.
You have to be patient and let them go.
You have to make them happen for yourself.
Network with people and influencers who will help you.
You need pray harder/meditate more / visualise more.
Do everything you can do and then do more.
If it’s meant to be, it will happen.
When you stop trying, that’s when it will happen.
Just relax and let it be.
Just accept yourself / your circumstance and then you’ll find peace.
I have done all of these things – bought plane tickets and chased my dreams halfway around the world. I’ve done it over and over again. I’ve let it go and let it go again, burning candles and memorabilia. Not just one dream, but several of them. But I’m still left sitting with the question and with that unbearable feeling of Anticipation Sickness welling up within me.
What if, this time? What if I’ve finally learned the lesson that would make me ready, climbed the obstacle that kept me stuck or I’ve become good enough or strong enough or pretty enough. Maybe, finally this mysterious timing and God’s good will has finally caught up with me.
Hope is not a joyful feeling – hope is the gut-wrenching, white-knuckled sigh of the heartbroken, brave and vulnerable to look up, to say ‘Okay, let’s go again.’
A friend said sometimes we are presented with our hope over and over again because in our despair, loss and heartbreak, we learn something we needed to know. She’s right and yes, I have learned deep and good lesson from the heartbreak of hope lost. I know there is truth in that statement but I struggle to accept it as the entire truth – because it doesn’t ring true with my experience. Sometimes all I have learned in the losing is to persevere. But how many times do you need to learn that lesson, before it turns bitter? Surely the Universe has gentler, kinder and more creative ways to teach us that destroying us over and over?
Still, we teach resilience and embrace courage to be vulnerable and to try again, despite our heart-pounding and questions. I am facing my own heart-pounding What-If questions again. Hope comes racing back to the surface and emerges in my late-night sub-conscious, as if the day-dreams weren’t unmanageable enough.
This combination of hope and anxiety can be crippling. And that’s anticipation sickness. Knowing the risk you take to hope at all, knowing what losing hope will feel like, how our way of seeing the world will be again challenged. It’s the fear and anxiety that overshadows joy. Hope is not a joyful feeling – hope is the gut-wrenching, white-knuckled sigh of the heartbroken, brave and vulnerable to look up, to say ‘Okay, let’s go again.’
It’s anxiety in disguise, the kind only known by those who have experienced loss and disappointment. If you have lost hope and yet hoped again, you know what anticipation sickness is. You know the dread feeling of all you might lose again. So it’s hope and heartache all over again and the world clamours at us, with bad advice and little empathy.
It’s lonely, because everyday hopeful circumstances for everyone else , are not that simple or black-and-white for us.
Montaigne sings “Heartbreak / Feels like an old dream / Feels like a demon / I cannot shake him / I’m not afraid to fall / I am still standing here after all / I didn’t die / That’s my consolation prize / I am alive / That’s my consolation prize.”
At times in my life, I have found myself unable to live in my current reality because it felt hollow and empty in comparison to the dream. But the dream is just a possibility. No matter how I reach for it, I cannot touch it or make it a real thing. No matter how I have tried. In my darkest moments, life has felt like a consolation prize, a next-best-option while I wait for the real thing.
Ask A Better Question.
Replace ‘what if?’ with ‘what now?’ and you’ll find a pathway to living in What-Is, the Present.
‘Whatever you have in your hands, that’s your responsibility.’
Nothing more, nothing less. What you have in your hands is now. You cannot hold the past, you only carry the lessons with you today. You cannot hold tomorrow either. What you have is ‘now’. And that is all you need, it’s all you actually have capacity for. Just today. Nothing more, nothing less. That’s what is in your hands.
What-Is stands exacting when What-If is hard to define. My heart, sick yes, with hope deferred and endless wondering of “what if?”, is not so inclined to trust. My disappointed heart is coaxed back to trust again by the experience of the present. I fiercely drag myself back to that brightly-lit day. What now, today?
How To Move Forward
The best strategy is just a plan, with a little understanding behind it. I’ve learned a strategy for being present today while moving towards the future is to break everything down into the tiniest steps. Most dreams will take months, years, even decades to eventuate. So when living day to day, it’s easy to feel dejected and that you’re not moving forward at all. But you can take a tiny step in a day. Today, you can do one thing to move you closer to where you want to be. A piece of research, downloading an application form, reaching out to the one you’ve been waiting to hear from. Making the call you don’t want to make.
The Creative Spirit does not jest with us, not once, and understands the fragile human heart. The Universe does not crush our hopes nor tease us without mercy, nor hide themselves from us. We just go looking in the wrong place for God in the future, when God is present in the Now, in the What Is. Present is the only place to find peace in the wake of Anticipation Sickness caused by what we hope for, what we long for, what may yet be.
What-Is is I Am, I Was, is Ever Will Be
What-Is the moment and the day, present
pressing us closer to the Light revealing masterwork
still barely seen, the ripples in each day
but at a distance of some What-Was,
the vast, expansive movement of Love is bright.
What-Now becomes again joyful, no consolation prize.
by tashmcgill | Oct 29, 2016 | Culture & Ideas, Mind
I’m coming to the end of the #100days project, which began on August 1, 2016 and will finish on November 8th, 2016. People have been asking, what this project has been about. You’ve seen glimpses.
Here’s an explanation and a question of sorts.
How long does it take to grow? The answer is: forever, like the largest, oldest tree that grows inch by inch into tomorrow.
Live long enough and you will learn there are different ways to grow. Some might grow tall, straight and true towards the sun, unstoppable and with unchanging trajectory. Some still straight but with no idea which way their roots go beneath the soil. Some grow wild and unruly. Some will grow entirely shaped by the elements they face, windswept by westerlies until their canopy echoes the curve of the ridge top. Some will drag life out of stony rockface and make a rambling home there.
But if you have the desire, you can choose the way you grow. You can learn how to learn and how to transform. It’s a strange paradox that transformation is how we get from back to our truest selves after the world has demanded how it wants us to be.
How long does it take to grow? The answer is: no time at all, if you know what you are measuring. I count seasons and especially springtimes, moon cycles and sleepless nights. I know the time it takes to let resilience do its work on the way back from disappointment, I measure the slow creep of desire and how it unravels the truth from us.
How long does it take to grow? The answer is as long as it takes to tell the truth; about yourself to yourself and for yourself.
A gardener can take a bonsai tree and determine the final form it will take. Working with organic growth and guiding it with an artistic eye.
A designer will take elements of shape, weight, colour and purpose and bring these otherwise unrelated ideas together into a single, sometimes multiplying form.
We grow by design, taking lessons intentionally and unintentionally. All growth is transformation but not all transformation takes us back to truth; that finicky balance of awareness and self-awareness. Knowing how the world is around us and how we are in the world.
I began #100days because I was seeking transformation. Having encountered within myself some deep knowledge, an awareness of something underneath the surface of my skin longing to find the light – I had to find a way to guide it out.
So for #100days, I have simply paid attention, observed and written down what I have seen, what I have learned, how I have changed. I have been intentionally focused not on what is outside of me, but what is within me that ought to come out.
It has not been one hundred days of a single activity or focus, like an extended Lent. It has been an exercise in letting my inner self tell a story to my outer self – my soul compelling my mind to listen. Because we must learn how to learn and keep learning even when we are in the midst of a repeating machine. There is something in our souls that longs to reach up to the sun and something in our roots that calls for deeper earth.
The heart can be deceitful in many things and your mind will overwhelm you with anxiety if you let it run free. But if I let my soul speak, that which searches out meaning in the world and listens to both heart and mind – I find my way to transformation.
It is Day Ninety. Today I am noticing how much changes in a year, just by opening your life to new experiences. What new bravery I have discovered within myself and what a beautiful new nuance to my voice, even if I alone appreciate it.
The hardest parts of labour are the moments immediately before birth. The last few days have been hard. These snippets of storytelling have encountered moments of joy, hope, sadness, journey, gratitude and mystery – I have measured my growth in the ability to notice and pay attention to the greater story being told around me.
I wanted to share it, because I wanted to see if I could observe and learn something inspiring or hopeful or useful every day. Here’s to your companionship on the journey with me and to whatever is growing and transforming within you.
by tashmcgill | Feb 13, 2016 | Friendship, Love & Marriage, Mind
One morning last year, I woke from a dream and my head was full of thought; hanging like a wave waiting to crest for some time. The kind of billowy thoughts that are undefined; really more of a feeling. It was heavy and I searched to define it until I remembered the word; melancholy.
On this particular morning, I struggled to find reason for my melancholy. I was in the middle of an adventure overseas, I was surrounded with friends and I was drinking whiskey, not gin. I was not unhappy. I was content.
I made coffee and sat at my favourite window in a house I love. The sun was warm on my back and I was without obligation but to embrace the moment. Still my heart would not quicken and I could not lift my soul. And I remembered then; this is the Lonely. There was something within me longing to be heard; but the one to hear was not with me.
So I let it sit, let it dwell with me for the day. Loneliness becomes a more tolerable companion as soon as you acknowledge its presence, I’ve found. I let others assume the reason for my quiet reticence that day and then in the evening, alone in the quietness of my room, I said to the Lonely, ‘Thank you for today and good night.’
The Lonely wished me a clear night of sleeping and gently exited the room. What happened so that when I woke, the Lonely was no longer with me?
What the Lonely Is Trying To Tell Us.
Scientists speculate the human brain contains over 100 billion nerves, communicating complex messages. These nerves are responsible for communicating pain, injury and harm. But the soul, the spirit has no such system – or at least, not one so clearly defined or as understandable as neurons. So the intangible self must find ways of alerting us to when something is wrong with our spirit.
I believe that much of what we feel, sense and experience in life, good and bad – is part of the complex communication between the articulate mind and the intangible, voiceless soul. When change is required, when change is happening, when something good or when something bad is emerging – feelings emerge to guide us down the way.
The challenge is that we confuse these feelings for being a ‘state’ rather than a message. A message is something to hear and respond to; a state is something you have to morph from. The Lonely is trying to tell us something and the lonely won’t go away until it’s been heard.
I was talking with a friend who is recovering from a relationship breakup, the real kind where your whole being is redefined in moments. He spoke with sadness and tenderness about the emerging loneliness in his life and I witnessed many of the ways he tried to change his state of being. And this week, I’ve heard the same from many others as Valentine’s Day approaches.
“If I can just find plans for the weekend, I won’t be lonely.”
“So long as I’m with friends on Valentines Day, I’ll be ok and not think about it.”
“I’m not going to be alone, I am going to find a new relationship.”
Judge a person by their questions, not their answers.
That morning, I woke and encountered melancholy and realised my soul was trying to send me a message.
“Why are you here today, while I am in the company of so many friends? What are you trying to tell me?”
I asked the Lonely what it was saying.
Over the years, the Lonely has visited me before along with Sadness, Frustration, Hopelessness. At other times, Joy, Anticipation, Delight and Contentment have visited me too. But for today, here’s what I’ve learned the Lonely is trying to tell me.
I might be isolated. With people or alone, but either way disconnected. Usually it’s when my thoughts have traveled inward and haven’t been expressed. I have something that ought to be shared with someone but I haven’t shared it.
I might feel invisible or unnoticed in a crowd. This is the plague of the third-wheel, the calamity of the social single. It’s not always, but sometimes you feel you could be lost from the moment without people noticing you were gone.
I am lacking in intimacy. A thousand people to small talk with but no-one to understand the bitter-sweet irony of a moment or a glimpse of something we’ve seen before. An absence of shared memory or history. Often, loneliness exists in the midst of our dearest friendships and relationships because we’ve fallen into the habit of being with someone without being present to that person.
I am not engaged. For human beings, Bored and Lonely are sometimes telling us the same thing. We’re not engaged in the present. With the ones in front of us or with what might be discovered in front of us. We see things as they appear to be. We assume the blue hat is on the hook by the laundry door because it is so frequently there we forget to look for it. We stop noticing the small changes in the pattern of what we see everyday.
I am feeling uncomfortable or in a new environment. I long for something familiar. I long for security.
I feel Other and insecure. I feel alone and unlike anyone else. I am without a sense of home in this moment.
Sometimes I am just longing. Loneliness tells me my body needs touch. I need the embrace of another, the warmth of human skin and to share the breath of life. I need closeness and for my pleasure receptors to be firing. I need to respond and be responded to. That may not mean sex and sometimes it might. Loneliness reminds me that my body, mind and spirit are connected. Two cannot carry the load of three endlessly.
“Why are you here today, while I am in the company of so many friends? What are you trying to tell me?”
In the simplest of forms, loneliness is most often telling us that we need interaction and engagement with other human beings. The burden is that we may not always be able to dictate what kind of interaction we have. But be disciplined and choose which desire to feed.
Which do you feed?
There is a Cherokee story about a boy and his grandfather. The grandfather explains there are two wolves in battle within us; one that is good and represents hope and peace. The other evil and represents anger, sorrow and ego. The boy asks his grandfather which wolf wins and the old man answers, ‘The one you feed’.
When we assess data and information; we have to be careful to not let our assumptions lead to the wrong conclusion. You can find evidence for nearly any hypothesis, depending on the question you ask. So, if you assume that loneliness is a state and you must simply wait until circumstances change so that you are no longer lonely – you are using the wrong data. You have to be careful not to feed your loneliness based on the incorrect data.
But wait about on Valentine’s Day? Or family holidays? Similarly, it is incorrect to assume that a single form of interaction might appease the loneliness or need you have. It is madness to assume that any single relationship can satisfy the needs of a human being. We are complex and multifaceted creatures with maddeningly simple and complex needs. When loneliness enters your life, it’s not because you are single or unhappy in your marriage. It’s because your mind and body is trying to tell you something. When you respond to the message, things will change. Respond to the message first and then deal with the circumstances later.
I will not be any more or less lonely simply because I might one day share my Lonely with another. They will not be able to banish the lonely, but they may share it.
Today, I am single but that’s irrelevant. I am a person who is connected, engaged, present, intimate with a few, friendly with many. I can reach out for a hug when I need it or caress the cheek of a friend. I could take a lover or I could find a mate. But I will not be any more or less lonely simply because I might one day share my Lonely with another. They will not be able to banish the lonely, but they may share it.
You can hear me this Sunday night (February 14, 2016) talking about loneliness on NewstalkZB with Sam Bloore from 6 – 7.30pm.
by tashmcgill | Feb 3, 2015 | Mind, Relationships
There’s nothing more heartbreaking or frustrating than listening to a friend talk about the latest fight they had with their lover or family member, when you hear an emergence of the same old patterns, the same old stories and the same habits. Those habits are slowly destroying the future of the relationship.
Conflict is necessary and inevitable, but not always necessarily bad. Conflict is often how we discover and process our differences. Because conflict can be any difference of opinion or desires, it is not always a ‘loud’ expression of discord. It’s how express conflict that makes all the difference as to whether it’s healthy or unhealthy.
In romantic situations, we’re often sold an idea of conflict merely being thinly veiled passion but despite promises of great makeup sex – conflict is much more than the flipside of our passion. Each of us will experience conflict with many different people in different ways throughout our lifetime. The key is to not become so habitual in the way we personally express conflict, that we are unable to learn and grow new, smarter ways of addressing conflict in our interpersonal relationships.
Most of us only have one, maybe two fight modes. If those fight modes are not constructive, then conflict is likely to be unhealthy, rather than something we can work through to achieve greater understanding, harmony and intimacy. If you can learn to evolve your fight modes over time, you can become a better communicator through conflict. You can grow from it. If you get stuck in an unconstructive fight mode, you might well be doing damage unwittingly.
Wondering what an unconstructive fight mode might be? Here are a few examples.
The Demand/Withdraw Cycle.
One partner (research says more often it will be a woman) demands change, discussion or resolution of an issue, while the other partner avoids or deflects. This cycle is a terrible way to fight because ultimately, nothing is able to be resolved. If one person is not participating in a conversation, it’s not really a fight. Quickly it becomes an attack. The danger is one person becoming dominant over the other because how they raise the issues (which may well be valid) is pushing the defensive boundaries of the other partner, thereby shutting down other forms of resolution or communication.
Carrying a Duffel Bag.
If you or your loved one’s fight mode includes frequently revisited previous conflicts, wrongs or mistakes – that’s a Duffel Bag fight mode. This person is cataloguing previous encounters and regularly unpacks them in any argument to back up their point. This is soul-destroying to live with. Are you carrying a duffel bag of things you’ve fought about but not resolved? Are you carrying a list of previous mistakes and not allowing your loved one a chance to move on or progress? Time to reset your fight modes before you destroy what’s left of your partner’s self-esteem or have yours destroyed.
The Roll Over.
Slightly different to the Demand/Withdraw (that one is really a team effort!), the Roll Over is the posture of someone who is already feeling defeated and prefers not to engage in the conflict at all. Whether you or your loved one is responding with this posture, it’s a fast track to misunderstanding and deep wounds on both sides. This can also be displayed as simply ignoring the issue.
The Pushback.
If one partner believes there to be an issue but the other partner proactively pushes back or denies the issue. Usually this is associated with a putdown of the other person’s perception or security in the relationship and/or personal critique.
The Whiplash.
If you’re ever been on the receiving end of this one, it’s actually hard to keep up with where the emotional swing is at. At any point in the conflict, your loved ones attitude might be full of love and/or remorse only to swing back moments later. It creates total instability and undermines any trust.
The Here We Go Again.
The fight instigator usually has a regular trigger that causes a chain reaction. The chain reaction might also include some of the above, however usually the other partner can recognize similar patterns and language being used and therefore will either role play how they’ve previously temporarily resolved the conflict or shut down. Repeating temporary solutions only exacerbates and extends the duration of this unhealthy conflict.
The ‘I Am Right, Regardless’ Posture.
If either partner or loved one maintains this posture, you might as well call it quits now. There is little comeback for a relationship where one party cannot reasonably fathom the possibility that they may be wrong. Where one person assumes a superior position to the other from the outset, the resulting conversation or conflict cannot be resolved without an affliction to the personhood of one or the other.
And of course Flight Mode.
Avoidance at all costs, the truth is that this mode usually only occurs if there is some sort of identity wound or paradigm that prevents the person from being able to face (even terrified) conflict of any kind. This might be an habitual affliction or something that is a direct result of previous conflicts.
A constructive fight mode might be something like Respond Don’t React, Listen Then Reflect, or even Blurt Then Talk. If you can talk about your fight modes then you’ve begun a path to recovery and constructive behaviour. If your fight modes are unhealthy, you’ll be either reinforcing negative patterns for yourself or the other person.
Learn to talk about fighting.
‘It makes it hard to talk to you when you go into this ‘………..’ mode’ because it makes me feel like….
Here’s the rub: it doesn’t matter what you fight about. The way you fight is actually what’s depicting the health of your relationship and communication. You could fight about the smallest trivial things each day, but if your conflict process is actually helping you to learn about one another in constructive ways, it’s fine. Typically these relationships already have a high level of security.
Healthy conflict can be exhilarating because a passionate encounter with another person’s beliefs and/or values can create a sense of intimacy. Think about when someone has stood up to protect the rights of others in a public setting, or the resolution of a longstanding family conflict. These emotions play highly into our moral compass when dealing with conflict.
Often, it simply doesn’t occur to people to talk about how they fight. The focus becomes what they were fighting about instead of how they approach the disagreement. The key to successfully moving towards ‘as little as possible conflict in the healthiest possible way’ means maintaining an open-mindedness to trying new ways of resolving conflict. This is particularly something that parents should be mindful of as they navigate through complex teenage or young adult years. At that stage of life, young adults are learning conflict patterns they are likely to repeat throughout their lifetimes.
If you are stuck in any one of these or other similar patterns – it’s time to get help or get out. The truth is that many relationships cannot be resolved because the work required to change behaviour patterns are too engrained to be re-wired neurologically or through behaviour therapy without a large commitment from both parties.
