Twin Cities Relationship Resources, LLC

Suffering from an ANT Invasion?

ANTs: Automatic Negative Thoughts

ANTs are automatic negative thoughts. We all have them at times. Sometimes we have so many they crowd out more balanced or realistic thoughts and overwhelm us with feelings of unworthiness, incompetence, hopelessness, or failure.

These thoughts are masters at appearing realistic and conning us into believing them. Then they do their damage of changing the way we see things and how we react to the world around us. They pretend they are trying to keep you safe and free from hurt, but all they do is to shrink your world.

Some common ANTs are:

Oh, I can’t do that—it doesn’t even make sense to try.
I’m just not good enough.
I’d only end up failing again.
I would make a fool of myself if I tried.
Deep down inside I know there’s something wrong with me.
_________________________ (What’s an ANT that hangs around you a lot?)

At first, it might be hard to see the influence these destructive critters exert over your feelings and moods. Being aware of them is the first step to developing some influence of your own. I’ve read estimates that a person has 12,000–50,000 thoughts per day! Many of those are not conscious, so the first thing to do is slow down and tune into the thoughts running through your mind.

Once you slow down and identify the ANTs, the next step is to put them to the test. A little logic, a little truth, and a measure of compassion readily shows their weakness. Challenge those limiting ANTs with these questions:

Is that really so?
How do I react when I believe that thought?
What’s the supporting evidence?
What’s the evidence against it?
What are the exceptions to it?

Some additional, advanced-level questions:

Is there a guarantee that it can’t be different?
Where is the rule that I can’t try?
Am I willing to take the risk of succeeding, learning something positive, or enjoying myself?
Without that thought, who would I be?
When, where, and how did I develop these thoughts?
What good might happen if I chose to re-think them?

What’s one small, compelling thing you can do today to test out how the world can work differently from an ANT’s belief?

Rebecca | No comments | Tags: ANTs, automatic negative thoughts, challenging what holds you back

Problems • Resources

Be Right Or Be Together?

Would your decision be easier if “being together” didn’t necessarily mean “being wrong”?

A lot of couples argue about who’s right, and “The Truth”, as if there was an objective reality. And, of course, each partner believes he/she is the one who’s right. I call this “Right Fighting” and here’s why it’s a waste of time…

being right or together

Because 100% of the time what you’re arguing over is perception, not reality. Perception is a matter of opinion. You get to have your opinion and your partner gets to have his/her opinion. Period. Always.

Was he nagging you, or merely reminding you? Was she criticizing you, or merely pointing out what she thinks is a more efficient way? Coming up with a scientific method to draw the line between the two is neither productive or helpful. It doesn’t matter whether he was nagging or reminding, she was criticizing or suggesting.

You both have core values on the line here, and therefore neither of you is going to budge an inch on the definition. The good news is, it doesn’t matter. Find a word you can both agree to use (and if that takes more than 2 minutes, at least one of you is quibbling) and get on to the crux of the matter. That’s what the behavior means to each person. What was your experience with these behaviors when you were growing up? How about for your partner?

If exploring these meanings doesn’t increase your compassion towards your partner, it might be worth consulting with someone like me to help you and your beloved get out of the rut of Right Fighting and power struggles.

balance scales

Or you can keep repeating your battle over an unresolvable pattern, escalating the conflict in each replay, until one of you checks out of the relationship.

Rebecca | No comments | Tags: Arguing, Negotiating, Relationships

Couples

Anxiety

Here’s one definition of anxiety: “When behavior, affect, thought, and/or sensation are incongruent, we suffer an error signal or anxiety.”

anxious

For me, it’s comforting to think about anxiety as “an error signal”. When I notice I’m starting to feel anxious, I remind myself it’s just an error signal from my environment. Then I get a comical image in my mind of the robot from Lost in Space waving his arms about, intoning “Danger, danger!” This makes me grin and already my anxiety is lessened a bit.

Anxiety exists on a continuum. Everyone experiences anxiety from time to time. That’s normal. It’s also uncomfortable, and that’s where various techniques come in–different ways to cope with anxiety, to manage it in your life.

There’s garden variety anxiety that is a basic part of life and useful feedback, and then there’s chronic or pervasive anxiety that’s seriously getting in your way of living a fulfilling, happy life.

For the garden variety type, those lists of ’10 Ways to Reduce Anxiety’ can be helpful. My visualization above is an example of a method that works for me to get a handle on the feeling. Then I use other strategies that tend to work for me in getting back to grounded, calm balance.

Moving up to the more problematical, is experiencing anxiety frequently. The error signal is getting triggered too often, or not getting turned off quickly or easily enough.

This typically happens in one or more particular areas of a person’s life. When it becomes your constant companion there’s usually a reason behind it.

You’ve got Stuff.

You can probably clear the Stuff out on your own, eventually. Medication may be helpful for some, but doesn’t work for many others, and the side effects can be troublesome. So many people expect a pill to offer a silver bullet solution and end up disappointed. If medication works for you, I’m glad. And if it doesn’t work as well as you’d like…I’m here to help.

That’s right, another option that is all-natural and efficient is counseling. Consult with a professional who’s been trained to help people clear out Stuff. I think working with the underlying Stuff is, in the long-run, going to work for you more effectively, more reliably, and generally all-around better.

If you’ve tried the ’10 Ways…’ lists and they’re not cutting it, maybe it’s time to get an expert Anxiety Buster in your corner.

What is your anxiety telling you, if you consider it in terms of the definition starting off this post?

Rebecca | No comments | Tags: Anxiety

Problems

Mine, Yours, Ours

Scenario #1: Time
Joseph walks in the door and Letitia immediately starts telling him about her day and asking him questions about family plans. “Why can’t she give me some peace and quiet when I get home?” he later grouses to his friends.

Scenario #2: Space
Over dinner Betsy asks Paul where her library books are, that she had placed by the back door. When he tells her he needed to put something down there and moved them, she replies, “I had them there to remind me to return them on the way to work. Now they are overdue and we have a fine.”

Scenario #3: Money
Fred is balancing the family credit card statement and asks his domestic partner, Ross, about one of the charges. Ross responds he took his sister out for a birthday lunch. Fred replies, “Did you have to go to such an expensive place? We’re not going to have enough saved up for our vacation if you spend money at this rate.”

Do you identify with any of these scenarios?

They are examples of common areas of conflict between couples. They arise from core differences (I’ll talk about that in another post).

If any of these or related issues keep coming up with you and your mate, most likely you just want to figure out how to get past them. Repeating problems – where the same issue arises again and again in a relationship – can resist our best efforts to resolve them.

One approach that is helpful to some of the couples I work with is “Mine, Yours, Ours”. Every couple needs to figure out what’s mine, what’s yours, and what’s ours.

People create a couple relationship when they want to share important parts of their life with another. Just as importantly, everyone needs some privacy in their life. We all need to have things that are just for us alone. The question then becomes, what things and to what extent are they shared versus private.

You might have guessed from the above scenarios, that three major things that can be considered from a “Mine, Yours, Ours” standpoint are time, space, and money. These are some of the biggest areas of life and no surprise that they are often argued about between couples.

Of course, “the devil is in the details” as they say. Negotiating and respecting both your and your partner’s needs can take several experiments followed by honest discussion. Remember, each of us is the way we are for legitimate reasons-there’s almost no right or wrong involved; just two people who love each other and happen to have different ways of maintaining emotional and lifestyle comfort. You can download my chart and give it a try!

Looking back over your relationship history (and not just romantic relationships, but any of them) can you remember a time when this factor played out? What happened, and what might you do differently today?

Click image for entire form
mine, yours, ours

Rebecca | No comments | Tags: Communicating, Negotiating, Relationships

Couples • Getting What You Want • Resources • Worksheets

Try Something Different

There’s a famous quote defining insanity as doing the same thing again and again, yet expecting different results. We laugh because on the face of it we recognize the futility of such behavior while also being aware we’ve each been guilty of doing exactly what is being warned against.

Do you wonder, along with me, what’s going on that this is such a universal experience we joke about it?

My theory is that we often get so focused on the result we want, that we don’t stop to realize we’re still using a method that’s been proven to fail. Even if you know your approach isn’t the best way to go about handling a situation, still, you want something to be different.

And that’s exactly what I recommend:

do something different

Notice when you’re not getting what you want and instead of blaming the other person for not giving it to you, challenge yourself to try something different. Look at some change you can make in what you’re doing that might work better at attracting what you want.

Think of it as a mini science experiment. Write down the problem then think about a new, positive behavior you can try. Test it out and discover what you can learn from doing something different. Repeat, using your new information to get closer and closer to the results you want.

This can be tough to do on your own. When you care about something a great deal, it can be hard to step back and look at the “big picture” of the situation. If you’re stuck, find someone to help you. That’s one of the things I do–help people get unstuck.

Maybe you remember a time when you were trying to get a different result by doing the same thing, but then experienced a shift that helped you go about it in a better way. What happened that you could bring that about?

Rebecca | No comments | Tags: Change, Negotiating, Relationships

Resources

Stop Fighting, part 2 of 2

In my last post, I explained why it’s not realistic to think you can stop fighting completely with your spouse / partner. I assumed that you picked the option of wanting to stay in the relationship and improve it. (The other two options are to end the relationship or to stay in it without changing anything in an effective or positive way.)

fighting couple

So at this point you might be wondering what I can do to help you improve this important relationship that has somehow gotten mired down in increasingly negative feelings. Accept that you and your partner will have disagreements from time to time. Commit to learning how to make your quarrels productive and less hurtful. In fact, a well-handled dispute can actually enhance intimacy in your relationship!

I’ve got some great information and tools I can share with you. We now have over 30 years of studies showing us what works in couple / marriage counseling. And I regularly train with some of the best therapists of our time.

My approach in working with clients is to address the 3 areas I believe are crucial to success:

Attitude
Skills
Barriers

Attitude is the key area. Without the right attitude, all the skills in the world won’t help and any barriers present will be impervious to my best techniques. Attitude is related to motivation. Most of us start therapy feeling at least a little ambivalent. That’s normal, and it’s fine if that’s where you are, too. I can help you explore that ambivalence and suggest ways to strengthen your motivation, if that’s what you want.

Skills are about adding some tools to your repertoire; more effective ways to communicate, problem-solve, and negotiate. It takes lots of practice and a willingness to make mistakes to learn new skills well. Remember learning to ride a bicycle? Once that new skill becomes a habit, you will experience greater ease and satisfaction in using it.

Barriers refers to those things that try to get in the way of you moving forward. Things like mistaken beliefs, unrealistic expectations, maladaptive patterns and role models learned when you were a child. Sometimes these things give way easily, sometimes they need a little extra attention.

Which of these 3 areas will be hardest for you to work with? What successes have you had already?

Rebecca | No comments | Tags: Arguing

Couples

Stop Fighting, part 1 of 2

Many couples call me because they have reached a point where the conflict in their relationship has become too much to bear. They’re angry, exhausted, lonely, and afraid. Not a comfortable place!

fighting couple

The shocking news I have to give them is I can’t help this couple – these two lovely people – to stop fighting. And, actually, no one else can either.

Let me explain. Go get a pen and paper; I’ll wait. Ready? Okay, now write down a list of people you know–family, friends, coworkers, and other people (such as bank tellers, waitresses, cashiers) who you come into contact with on a regular basis.

When you’ve done that, put a star in front of those people you sometimes fight with. Put two stars if the two of you argue frequently.

What do your starred people have in common? If you’re like many people, you answered “The people I’m closest to,” or “The people I care about most.”

So can you see that it’s perfectly natural that the more intimate the relationship, the more likely you will be to step on each others toes, and experience conflict? Not too surprising, really, once you think it over a bit.

“How do my mate and I stop fighting?” is a trick question. To stop disagreeing with someone is to either not spend time with them or to care so little about their opinion that you have no interest in arguing. I hope you and your mate are not at this point! What you probably do want is a way to handle disagreements while maintaining closeness with your partner.

And see Stop Fighting, part 2 for what I can do to help you with that.

Rebecca | No comments | Tags: Arguing

Couples

Free Marriage Counseling

Several times every week visitors arrive at my website who are searching on some variation of “free marriage counseling.”

I wish I could offer my services for free. After all, I got into this line of work because I’m passionate about helping people change stuck patterns into more satisfying ways of relating. But, until I win the lottery, or something equally lucrative, my business model has to include charging fees for my services.

However, I do know many people are living on tight budgets, especially these days. Aside from many people’s discomfort around consulting with a trained professional (and stranger) about everyday (though difficult) relationships and feelings, spending money on counseling seems like a luxury when you are having difficulty paying your rent or mortgage. In our society, our physical life gets more attention than our emotional/psychological health–but that’s another post.

I really want to honor and empower any couple – or individual in a troubling relationship – ready and willing to do the work of improving their relationship. So here’s a list of resources to get you started in receiving the help you deserve in transforming your current problem. Depending on the severity of the problem and length of time of time it’s been present, your initiative/motivation, and a bit of luck, one or more of these may be useful to you:

If you belong to a worship community, your clergy person may offer several low to no cost meetings. He or she will also likely have a list of therapist referrals.
Look up “community mental health clinics” in the yellow pages or a search engine. There are several agencies offering counseling on a sliding scale basis. Most common is individual counseling, so when you call ask if couple or marriage counseling is offered.
Search online for credible information on your specific topic.
Check for a relevant self-help book at your local library or through inter-library loan.
I do offer a few reduced fee time slots. Contact me to discuss this option.

These methods have served some people well. First try the ones that appeal to you the most. A “good fit” is key to successfully making changes. Give it some sustained effort – it takes practice to shift ingrained habits into new behaviors.

Best wishes, and let me know what’s worked for you!

Rebecca | No comments | Tags: Cost

About Counseling • Resources

Life Balance Wheel

You might be familiar with this tool already. There are many versions posted online.

Each of the “pie slices” represents an aspect of your life. By rating each one you can get a sense of where your strengths and resources lie, and which areas are the least satisfying.

It’s important to consider both: you will have the best success by leveraging the relatively positive areas to improve the low points.

Click on my version below and try it out! Be sure to think about the questions for a few moments–you want to note your initial answers as well as those which occur to you after a bit of reflection.

If you’re feeling completely stuck and confused about any of the difficult areas, consulting with an effective professional might offer just the support you need to break through.

Click image for entire form
life balance

Rebecca | No comments

Getting What You Want • Resources • Worksheets

Life Tasks

This is a more basic version of the core areas of life that are more important to one’s health and well-being.

Each of the “pie slices” represents an aspect of your life. By rating each one you can get a sense of where your strengths and resources lie, and which areas are the least satisfying.

It’s important to consider both: you will have the best success by leveraging the relatively positive areas to improve the low points.

Click on my version below and try it out! Be sure to think about the questions for a few moments–you want to note your initial answers as well as those which occur to you after a bit of reflection.

If you’re feeling completely stuck and confused about any of the difficult areas, consulting with an effective professional might offer just the support you need to break through.

Click image for entire form
life tasks

Rebecca | No comments

Getting What You Want • Resources • Worksheets

« Older Entries

Suffering from an ANT Invasion?

Be Right Or Be Together?

Anxiety

Mine, Yours, Ours

Try Something Different

Stop Fighting, part 2 of 2

Stop Fighting, part 1 of 2

Free Marriage Counseling

Life Balance Wheel

Life Tasks

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