YOUR LIFE A-Z: KINDNESS

GIVE BACK TO THE WORLD

KINDNESS

There is not excuse not to be kind.  There is no reason to trample on someone else’s opinion, possessions, or space just because you disagree with them or you are having a bad day.  Pema Chodron, in her book, The Places that Scare You, teaches loving kindness practice.  In Buddhist tradition, prayer always starts with you first.  So, it goes like this: “May I experience kindness and the root of kindness.”  After you comes six other people, including the person you are having the most difficult being and broader to all sentient beings.  

There is correlation we see in the psychotherapy office that seems to be a mirror to how individuals live their lives.People who are kind to him/herself tend to be kind to others, including giving the homeless person a bottled water or a buck. People whose inner critic beat them up all day with negative and doubtful thoughts tend to do the same to everyone else in his/her path, especially the non-suspecting clerk that is a little slower than he/she would like.  If you are finding yourself grouchy, upset, uptight and rude then it is time to take a “time-out” and practice a little personal kindness.  What is eating at you that you have not been paying attention to?  Or, what are you worried about that you are holding inside all to yourself.  You deserve a good friend or partner to share what hurts inside.  Be kind to yourself today by sharing your worries with a trusted friend or writing them out to God, as you understand God to be and notice the transformation of your own mood.  Have a great day!

Summer Relationship Help

Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy: Seven Steps to De-escalate a Fight

1. Stop the Circular Dance (The Game): It is typical for each party of the couple to want to prove their point but the only outcome of that is exhaustion. So, stop the game.

2. Claim Your Own Moves: Once each person has stopped, examine your individual contribution to this game. Own your steps. Define what you do to keep it going. Begin to acknowledge your pattern in the dance. Share your patterns with your partner and listen to his/her patterns of ownership.

3. Claim Your Own Feelings: Own how you feel whether it is angry, sad, regret, rejection, disappointment, or ___________________________.

4. Owning How You Shape Your Partner’s Feelings: “We need to recognize how our usual ways of dealing with our emotions pull our partner off balance and to on deeper attachment fears.” (Johnson, pg,93) In order to be a part of the solution and be willing to comfort our partner’s raw spots we must own how our actions upset our partner.

5. Ask about Your Partner’s Deeper Emotions: Stop and look at the bigger picture. Slow down and check in with what is really going beneath your partner’s reactions and deeper emotional experience.

6. Share Your Own Deeper, Softer Emotions: If you take the risk to let your partner know what is really at stake, (hurting) in your arguments you might be pleasantly surprised at the connection that develops between the two of you.

7. Standing Together: By taking the above steps, the two of you can develop common ground and mutual connection, no longer adversaries but now allies.



Taken from:

Johnston, S. (2008) Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love.