Communication In A Relationship

A personal reflection of a relationship breaking down and how we could communicate better with ourselves and others.
We can all struggle to communicate, discuss and open up to others about how we are feeling and our emotions for fear of upsetting other people and those we care about.
Understanding that our feelings and emotions are valuable and an important part of our health and wellbeing. How we think and feel can affect each part of our lives and how we interact with others.
By taking responsibility for how we think and how we express ourselves we can learn to interact and communicate with others in a more positive and constructive way.

https://www.horizonplymouth.co.uk

Transcript

You are listening to the Therapy Guy, talking

about all things mental health, informing and supporting

you when you need it most.

Contact us for more information or with any comments

and please leave a review if you enjoy what

you hear.

Thanks for listening.

Hello and welcome.

Today, some of you anyway, you'll get

to see the face behind the Therapy Guy.

I'm going to do something different today.

I'm going to step out of my comfort zone

and I'm going to put this on YouTube as

well, so that people can see who I am.

People can see that this is just about me

talking to you, talking to you and explaining things

have happened, whether that's in my therapy room, whether

that's with clients, personally, all these things that can

affect my life and everything else.

You also might be aware of that

I've taken a bit of a break and at different times

I take a break, I sort of stop putting these out

and other times I can do them quite consistently.

There's several different reasons for that.

The biggest reason at the moment is

things are changing and things are happening

in my personal life that I've been

really struggling with, I've been finding difficult.

And all the training, all the experience I've

had, all those sorts of things that I've

learned and help people with throughout the years,

when they all come crashing on yourself, even

with all that experience, all that knowledge, it

can still be difficult, we can still struggle.

I've struggled.

I've recently been going through some difficulties in

my personal relationship with my partner and it's

been really tough to have difficult conversations.

It's really surprised me how having those conversations with

somebody who may not be on the same page

as you, with somebody who doesn't want the same

thing or doesn't feel the same way as you,

can be really difficult to start to have and

then to experience, process and understand

lately. I try to help the couples I

see, I try to help people communicate.

But no matter what we do, when we

rely on communication, we rely on two people

communicating in a way that's right for them.

We rely on two people feeling and hearing and understanding

each other in a way that's right for them.

Just recently I found this

really difficult, even for myself.

I've had to take a step back from some of the

work that I do just so that I can ensure that

I'm looking after my clients in my therapy practise appropriately.

I've got to take a step back from running my business

and I had to rely on my colleagues to help me.

It's a real chance to try to work out how

you're going to have these difficult conversations, how you can

have conversations that are possibly going to upset someone you

love and care about, but at the same time you

want to be able to communicate, you want to be

able to feel and you want to be able to

start that conversation off.

What we tend to do, and I've done this

myself, I've buried my head in the sand, I

tried to ignore it, I threw myself into work.

I've done all the classic cliche avoidance techniques that

I talk about quite regularly in my room.

And this is the thing, it's easy

for us to talk about it.

It's easy for us to give advice, to talk to others.

It's easy for everyone to do that.

You ask 100 people, they'll have 100

different opinions on what you should be

doing and what you could be doing.

But realistically, it's the conversation you're having

inside of here, the conversation you're having

in your mind that really matters.

It's very easy to point the finger, it's very

easy to blame somebody else, very easy to blame

a colleague, a partner, anyone you look at around

in the world and they blame the government, they

blame this, they blame that.

But this is about taking responsibility.

And this is what I've had to do just recently.

I've had to upset the person that

I care about most in the world.

I had to talk to her and tell her how I'm feeling.

And it's been really difficult.

It's been really painful for her to listen to,

it's been really painful for her to process.

And all of that compounds how

I'm feeling, the guilt, the avoidance.

It's easier to avoid that, then up, see

someone upset who you love and care about.

But I think for me it's about taking responsibility.

I've had to take responsibility for how

I feel, for how I think.

Nobody can change that conversation in your head.

We have to do that ourselves.

We have to try to encourage to ourselves

to be open, to be able to

express ourselves freely, but also understanding,

as I said, I can understand how difficult it can be.

I've always known how difficult it

can be to have those conversations.

Just recently, I've really experienced that for myself.

And it's been really painful and really upsetting.

And I've had to have some bad days, bad weeks where

things have seen quite dark, quite difficult to get up, to

take one step, to do the one thing, things that I

try to encourage my fantastic clients, people around me, my friends

and family to do all the time.

But when you're in that moment, when that cloud is

around you, it's very difficult, very hard to take that

step, to know what to say, to know how to

react, to keep those emotions under control.

You know, unfortunately, I can't make any

apologies for upsetting my partner.

I'm sorry about her seeing her upset.

I'm sorry about her hurting.

I don't want that to happen.

But I don't apologise for expressing how I feel.

I would like to think I've done it in

a malicious, not in a non malicious way.

I haven't pointed or tried to blame anyone else.

So I've taken personal responsibility of how

I think and how I feel.

I think by doing that, it can

give you quite a lot of power.

It's okay to feel low.

It's okay to feel that dark

clouds, to experience that pain.

Sometimes it represents the amount of

emotion you have over something.

If you love and care for someone or something, enough pain

you feel when it's taken from you can be immense.

But also we have to be aware

that we have a responsibility ourselves.

No one's coming to save us.

No one can truly help us

until we want to help ourselves.

I know that difficult conversations aren't over, and

I don't know what's going to happen.

I don't know how we're going to communicate

tomorrow, next week, in six months time.

All I know is that I need to keep being honest.

I need to express how I feel.

Sometimes that's really difficult because

I don't really know.

So it's okay for you not to know how you

feel, accept it, explain it, but maybe spend some time

trying to process, trying to work out exactly what it

is you need to do next for you.

It's very easy for us to stay in

relationships, to do things for other people.

We care for other people.

Well, we need to care for ourselves too.

The reason I've been off, as I said, I've

been struggling, and I've found that really difficult.

And some people reached out for

me and some people haven't.

And again, that highlights and adds to the pain

in some ways because the people that are reaching

out to me, you tend to push away because

you don't know what to say.

You don't know how to explain things.

And you know, ultimately that whatever

they're saying isn't going to help.

But also the people that don't reach out, the people

you thought were friends, the people you had around you,

who you thought were in your circle, those people who

aren't there when you need them most, that really adds

to the pain that I feel.

I've been through it before, but

this has shocked me now.

This is exacerbated.

All those feelings that I've been feeling made

me feel quite lonely, got isolated, which again,

pushes me down, adds to that dark cloud.

So what did I do?

Well, at certain times when I started having

these conversations, I have to prepare myself, really.

I have to look at what do I want to say?

What do I want to get across?

I try to take responsibility for everything I'm saying.

My aim is never to blame anyone else.

I use the word I or we. It's not about

striking out or hurting the other person verbally.

Nobody wins.

Nobody wins

when you start to argue the conversation, the thoughts

and feelings are very emotive, they're very emotional.

And you're not going to get to an end point

where both of you are still talking, are still communicating.

You're going to get to a point where

you're tearing lumps out of each other.

It doesn't matter where it is.

So really, it's about us taking some responsibility

for how we feel, how we explain things.

If we say the wrong thing, if we

aren't communicating it in the right way

I need to accept that.

I need to try to communicate it differently.

We've been having several discussions that

have been really painful, really difficult.

And I still feel this is two weeks later and I

still feel really emotional and find my day to day mood

is challenging because 1 minute I'm okay, the next minute I

can be emotional, I can be upset, tearful, and I know

my lovely partner, she's feeling the same way.

The first week I felt that black cloud, I was

in a place where I didn't really want to be.

I was facing thoughts and feelings I hadn't

faced or felt for a very long time.

I speak to people often about in

my office, and I feel them.

But again, when you feel them personally, when you feel

them inside physically, and when you feel them in your

brain, in your mind, in a conversation, it's constant.

When we don't look after ourselves, we don't eat

properly, we don't sleep properly, all those things, again,

exacerbate how we feel and how low and how

much energy it takes to actually get out of

bed, to speak to somebody.

I use my experience, I

suppose, my knowledge, my fortune.

I'm going to change my tact

but I feel that I'm fortunate that the people that I've

interacted with over the years have given me so much.

They give me so many coping mechanisms.

They give me so many ideas about

how to deal with my own emotions.

More than I could ever learn on any

course or at any college or university.

Experiencing people in pain, being there, it gave me quite

a lot of power, quite a lot of benefit for

dealing with things myself, quite a lot of strength.

I thank all of my clients for doing that.

So what I use is I allowed myself a week.

I allowed myself that week just to feel sorry for

myself or to feel low, to feel that dark cloud.

And then I knew I had to take responsibility.

I knew that I had to accept the challenge

of getting out of bed, of getting on.

It's okay for us all to feel these things.

I know not at the time, not doing it.

It's easy for me now to say two weeks

later, two weeks ago, I may not be able

to make this podcast, make this video.

So just look at things.

Look at it.

We just got to do one thing.

We got to take responsibility for looking

at ourselves, for caring for ourselves.

I try to have that conversation change the words

that I was using in my own mind.

I tried to get up and say, Right, that's enough.

Today's the day.

I'm going to get out of bed, I'm going to

have something to eat, I'm going to go outside.

All those things were a challenge,

all those things are difficult.

All those things are what we normally, on

a day to day process, take for granted.

The reason I'm doing this video is to show

you that we can all go through this.

It doesn't matter who we are.

Does it matter that I have all

this experience, I have all this knowledge?

I can adapt and help other people.

I can still do that.

But when it comes to ourselves, it

becomes more challenging because we're so used

to putting other people first.

We're so used to passing responsibility on to them.

And this is about us taking

responsibility for ourselves, for you.

I want you to know that when you speak to

a therapist, when you reach out, they have had their

own experiences, have had their own knowledge, they do really

understand how you feel, obviously in different ways.

Nobody can truly experience a depth

of feeling that I went through.

But a colleague, a therapist,

somebody impartial would understand.

If we communicate it, if we allow ourselves to

say, this is how I feel, whether that's you

writing it down, whether that's you expressing it, whether

that's doing a podcast just like this, part of

the process for me is allowing others to see

the feelings and emotions that I went through.

I want you to know that you're not alone.

I want you to know that there is

people there, even when you think there isn't.

But what I also really want you to know is

that it doesn't matter what's going on in the past.

It doesn't matter what sort of upbringing you've

had, what sort of life you've had.

Whatever has happened is gone.

You need to take responsibility.

We are in charge.

I am in charge of what happens to me next.

I'm in charge of the conversations, I have

emotions, I'm in charge of the challenges, how

I look at them, how I see them.

Do I see them as huge, great, big things?

Or do I see them as, let's

do one step, let's do something.

Let's get through today and

then we'll look at tomorrow.

How are you going to deal with yours?

What advice do you need?

Do you need some advice from someone like myself?

Do you need advice from me?

Please contact me, drop me a message,

anything, any way that I can help.

But what I want you to be aware of, if you

start to take responsibility to yourself, saying, I need to be

the one that needs to start the conversation, I need to

be the one that gets out of bed, I need to

be the one that feeds myself, things can change.

Yes, it may be painful for a while, yes, it

may be difficult for a while, but we are amazing.

We have an amazing resilience, an amazing strength to get

through these things, they are painful at the time.

Everything is temporary.

Our lives, our lives, they go through

different things, they go through different challenges,

and those challenges are temporary.

It may not feel it at the time, it

may feel it's constantly, one thing after another.

But we also have to accept, and I have to

accept to be a better version of me, for me

to grow and to change how I interact with other

people and have better relationships with them.

I need to go through this.

I need to understand how I think and feel.

I need to do that for myself, I need to do

that for everyone else I interact with after this point.

But I'm also aware that the little things

are so much more important to me now.

Those little interactions with little moments that bring me happiness,

that make me smile, they mean so much because two

weeks ago I was in so much pain.

We can live with regret.

I should have done this and I should have done that.

And I appreciate, a lot of us do and a lot

of us have circumstances, have problems and difficulties in our lives

that make things even a little bit more challenging.

But as I said, we have amazing ability

to adapt, we have an amazing ability to

take an extreme amount of stress and pressure.

Just try a day to change one thing, to do

one thing for yourself, whether it's take five minutes, go

for a walk, have a coffee, it doesn't matter.

Get out of bed, breathe some air, put

yourself at the same level as everybody else.

No one is more important than you.

We're all the same.

We're all in this together.

We just need to take responsibility for ourselves.

Stop pointing that finger, start saying, I feel this.

That gives us a lot of power,

gives us a lot of control.

I want you to look after yourself.

I want you to be amazing, I want you to be happy.

I want you to smile every single day.

If I can be a part of that, if I

can help in any way, please let me know if

this video or this podcast has helped anyway, but for

now, the therapy guy is signing off again.

I hope you have a great day and I will see you soon.

Thanks for listening.

Take care of yourselves.

Bye for now.

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