Tag: couples

Love & Heartbreak

Love & Heartbreak

helenmindfulme
by Helen Williams

During the month of November, this Mindful ME workshop will be focusing on relationships – all kinds of relationships, not just couples, from a Mindfulness perspective.  This means looking at how we ‘see’ relating, how we have learned to believe, experience, know and live within the context of relating both to ourselves and others.

After a lifetime of working in this field, I know that this means we will be talking about LOVE!  How we have experienced, and how we yearn to experience, connection with another.  It is commonly a very difficult field of inquiry, fraught with tension, and difficult, uncomfortable emotions and lots and lots of vigorous defence!

Not one of us will escape this heart opening, heart stopping, roller-coaster of emotional experience as we search for warm and loving connected awareness.  Each of us will discover that opening to love immediately equates to fearing the loss of love and for many, experiencing this loss slams the door tightly shut on our hearts.  Opening again requires the mammoth task of healing the break soundly enough to be able to negotiate again the fear that being loved may once more bring painful dislocation.  Sound familiar?

Exploring this terrain with a new focus, in a safe environment with adequate support can help us find ourselves both opening deeper within and exploring farther beyond our previous comfort zones.

Come and join with us as we explore the heights and griefs of conscious, loving connections, and discover the growth and richness that undefended love can bring.

Learn more about our upcoming Conscious Relationships workshop in November here.

Book your spot on the workshop by contacting us here. 

Learn more about Helen’s work with relationships by meeting her in her bio. 

 

artwork: Ivan Guaderrama

It takes a Village to Raise a Relationship

It takes a Village to Raise a Relationship

helenmindfulme
by Helen Williams 

There is a wonderful quote from Esther Perel, a Belgian psychotherapist and author which is particularly pertinent to those of us living as expats.

Esther Perel said “Today we turn to one person to provide what an entire village once did: a sense of grounding, meaning, and continuity.  At the same time we expect our committed relationships to be romantic as well as emotionally and sexually fulfilling.  Is it any wonder that so many relationships crumble under the weight of it all?’”

In many ways, this quote sums up a lot of the couples work that I encounter – this turning to one person for all of our wants, our needs, our wishes, our hopes, our dreams and our life.  This notion that one person could, can and ought to supply all our emotional needs is what so often leads to ‘good’ relationships crumbling.  I often have the sense that many couples would flourish more smoothly if they were planted in or near their familiar roots – that is, surrounded by their extended families, friendship groups, and other familiar people who have known them over time.

This, of course, would bring accountability for connectedness, for personal boundaries and our own expectations for predictable behaviours.  It is when we lose this familiar base of personal accountability that the test of our own unpredictable behaviour arrives.  If nobody knows us, then we have no one watching to help us keep a check on our reactions and behaviours.

For many young expats, this journey of self-accountability can just be passed on to our new partner and by believing that they are responsible for all our wants, hopes and needs we can then blame them for our relationship failure.

It takes a village to raise a relationship too! I believe it’s really important to feed, nourish and nurture varieties of relationships, not just our couple relationship.  There is great strength in diversity and different age groups and in the recognition of others watching our world with us.

What is Codependency?

What is Codependency?

helenmindfulme
by Helen Williams

Understanding codependence is another part of the search for ourselves, the discovery of why and how we are lost and about to journey back home to a full and rich inner life.

Codependence is fundamentally about disordered and chaotic relationships.  We become codependent when we turn our responsibility for our life and happiness over to other people – to our partners, our family or our friends.

Codependence is often seen as learned behaviour which is expressed by dependencies on people and things outside ourselves which neglect and diminish our sense of self.

We become codependent when we focus so much outside ourselves that we lose touch with what is inside us – our beliefs, our thoughts, our feelings, choices, experiences, decisions, our wants, needs, our intuitions.  These all form our inner life, the major part of our consciousness.  When we believe that someone or something outside of ourselves can give us fulfillment and happiness, then we look for people, places, things, behaviour or experiences for this fulfillment and neglect ourselves.

If you are interested in learning more about codependency come and join us for a discussion on Sunday 10 December where we will explore together what being codependent means to each of us and why it is such a common human condition. Contact us to book. 

Anger & Fear

Anger & Fear

helenmindfulme
By Helen Williams

We are often asked to teach workshops on anger management for people who struggle with the explosiveness and impulsivity of their angry reactions to daily events in their lives. For many people, anger is their “go to” emotion, the emotion that arises first, has the loudest voice and is their default reaction, and people are desperate to learn ways to manage, modify, control, change and redirect their rage.  In the heat of the moment, flipping into anger can destroy relationships, jobs, opportunities and even lives as some of you well know.

It may surprise you to know that I have never run an anger management workshop in all the years I’ve been teaching courses, classes and workshops on aspects of Personal and Self Development, Mindfulness and Authentic Living! Interestingly, I’m not going to run one now either because rather than learning to manage anger, the focus of our upcoming Mindful Living Workshop will be on understanding why anger has become our default setting, what lies beneath this noisy emotion, and how fear plays a pivotal role in anger’s explosions.   We’ll also look at how anger can go underground for some people and become a deep ice-cold sense of repressed feelings.

Come along prepared to share some of your anger experiences, hear from others about theirs, and participate together in new and different ways of tackling anger and fear in your daily life.

We look forward to welcoming you to this thought-provoking, stimulating and informative evening which is run as part of our fortnightly series of Mindful Living. Contact us to register and join us!

The Geography of our Love Maps

The Geography of our Love Maps

by Isabel Galiardo

When we love, our whole past rises up to our soul and resounds in it again. That is why love has such a high healing potential because by loving consciously we can heal our old wounds.

We carry an invisible love-map inside of us. It was designed in our early years when we absorbed all sorts of messages about love through our own experience of it. By the time we reached adolescence we had integrated a large number of assumptions, fears, preconceived ideas and expectations about the matter.

These beliefs define the type of personality that attracts us and the dynamics we create in our relationships. A belief is not just a thought, it is a whole cosmogony, it is the way I perceive myself and the world around me.

Because they are ingrained in our subconscious mind we believe blindly in them, they are absolute truths that rule our lives.They keep us repeating old familiar patterns all over again.

Notions such as:

’”I do not deserve to be loved, I’m not good enough.’’

” I can not be alone, I would not survive. ”

“I’m afraid of commitment, I do not want to be controlled.”

” If I trust and open up, they will hurt me again. “

When we learn to explore our feelings with openness and curiosity we realize they are clues to the geography of our love maps. And that is when the magical shift occurs, we begin to take ownership of our happiness and wellbeing instead of expecting our partners to do so for us.

Book individual sessions with Isabel by emailing info@mindfulme.me or contacting us. You can also join Helen and Isabel’s Couples, Communication and Codependency workshop to explore love maps and more.

An Unusually Common Couple’s Communication Issue

An Unusually Common Couple’s Communication Issue

helenmindfulme

by Helen Williams

When I’m working with couples, I often have the opportunity of watching their ‘couple talk” – their typical and most common way of addressing each other.   I get to notice a very familiar pattern which appears to creep in unnoticed for many, many couples and yet often becomes the deep wound which brings couples seeking help.

They name it as a “communication issue” but seldom have the words to adequately explain it.  Women will say “I feel like I’m never heard” and men will say “I can never do anything right.”

This is how it typically plays out:

Most often it is the woman who says, “You never listen to me, you never spend enough time with me, you never notice me and you treat me like I don’t matter.”

When I ask the male partner what he heard her say, he usually replies, “It doesn’t matter what I do it’s never good enough, I’m continually criticised and told off, I feel like I can never get it right.”

If you look at it, it sounds like a complainer talking to a fix it person.  For many men, a woman asking for attention sounds like a person with a problem requiring fixing.  Yet, if you ask the woman, she will often say I don’t want to be fixed or repaired or solved like a problem, I just need you to listen to me.

The main reason why it appears impossible for her partner to listen to her is simply the use of the word, YOU!

Try the same conversation again now after eliminating the use of the word you.

“I feel unheard. I’d love us to spend more time together, I need to be noticed, I’m often lonely.”

The reply can be more easily, “I didn’t realise, how can we change this?” because there is less criticism, censure and judgment when there is no YOU.

Why not take note of this in your daily conversation and make a change for clearer, more open communication?  Write yourselves a sign that says NO YOU and place it on the fridge. It works well with children too!

Learning to Love

Learning to Love

I admit I have been searching for love ever since I can remember. I have looked for it in novels, in movies, in friendship, in romantic partners, in motherhood and in my spiritual quest. After years of searching I have come to the conclusion that it is the true purpose of our existence.

I believe this planet is nothing but a school of love. Our biographical events are different scenarios for learning about love. Throughout our lives we experience all sorts of vicissitudes and adventures, ups and downs, crises and ecstasies that help us explore love in its most diverse manifestations.

I have suffered the absence of love and love’s betrayal. I have suffered from unrequited love and the fear of losing it, and each one of these experiences has taught me something about myself and my capacity to love. Every conflict, every disappointment, has given me the opportunity to discover more about my wounds, my insecurities and my lack of self love. The pain and the need for answers have brought me to my inner search, widening my heart and making it more encompassing.

When we love we become vulnerable and exposed and that is when life penetrates and teaches us. Through our relationships we learn to love more and better. We develop our ability to give, to expand our own boundaries and to conquer our own demons. Love chisels us, shapes us, polishes us.

As the poet Gibran says:

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.

Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.

Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,

so shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Isabel works with couples and individuals. If you would like to book a private session with Isabel please contact us today.