Love the Process | LQ014

Crystal Clark: 00:00:01

Welcome to our love space today, I hope you've been starting to share some best friend energy with your love of life. And if you haven't, then you should check out last week's podcast, because it's all about the importance of allowing your partner to be your best friend super important. All right. So today, I want to take a little step towards thinking about processing our feelings. I know we had touched a few episodes ago on having that hidden anger or annoyance to your partner. And maybe we don't even realize we've, we had it. Maybe we checked in with ourselves. And then we found out oh my gosh, that is one of the things that's maybe dampening the light of our relationship. And so if you checked in, and you're like, Wow, maybe that's for me, then we've got you covered today. So let's think about how this really fits into actually all four pieces of our cake, because it has sort of a US perspective on on each of those big pieces. So again, you may already have some successful ways to process your emotions, and your feelings. And that will mean that you probably don't have any hidden annoyance or anger, if you're one of those people who's listening in totally cool, alright, but it won't be lingering around for you. But if you do, that means that we need to really tweak our communication, we're gonna think about a little bit about what we're putting our energy into, if we're using our kind fullness in this process. And then really the last step, so things are a little out of order for this is really our affection piece, because that's going to help us with the repair. Okay, with the getting back to okay part after we have a misunderstanding or after, we have a miscommunication, that kind of thing. So, right, no one's perfect. And we have to remember that when we have things come up, if we are not processing them, if we are putting our energy into pushing them down and avoiding them and ignoring them. And worrying about not wanting to have a what we would call a conflict, okay, then we are kind of putting our energy into the wrong piece, because we are then missing out on an opportunity to communicate with our partner to send out a message, have it be received, have them send us messages back, okay, we're missing out on that opportunity, we're missing out on the opportunity to get to be kindful towards our partner, that vulnerability piece for them to be able to hear their feelings or for us to share our feelings, and that they got received kind fully, and that we got to put energy into processing and working on them together. We are ignoring or missing this opportunity to also have a collaborative human moment with each other, hey, this thing came up for us. How can we work together? How can we take our ideas together? Because we all know we've talked about before, that no one is perfect, right? miscommunications, having different perspectives. These are all normal. And working through them, too. To an understanding with each other is really a true human moment. And really a true human experience. Right, that should be shared in our close human relationships not avoided, right. So people like to avoid this word conflict. And that's where a lot of this non processing comes from. It's because we're trying to avoid conflict we're trying to avoid not making ourselves feel uncomfortable, or we're trying to avoid not making ourselves feel uncomfortable. And we're trying to avoid not upsetting others, I guess not making others uncomfortable. Also, right or feeling blame for you know, or guilt or worry, or, you know, no one likes to be wrong, right? We do try to avoid being wrong. And we do like to be right. But this is a true human experience. Let's not miss out in skip this human experience, right? It's not something to avoid for or hide or hide from, and it is going to feel weird, uncomfortable, awkward is going to feel all of those things. That's okay. Again, those are all human emotions. Those are normal human emotions to have when you are doing something new or something hard. It is okay to feel weird, awkward, uncomfortable. It's okay. You don't have to avoid it. Actually. One of the first important aspects of this is that to process our feelings with each other in our relationship is that we really have to let the person know that there is something has come up, that there's something we need to communicate about something we need to collaborate on as quickly as possible. But we also need to allow enough Time to pause. So that we can be kindful in our communication and that we're ready to collaborate. So some of us need a longer pause than others. But why I say we need to do it as quickly as possible, is because if the other person, if our partner for our love of life doesn't know that there's been a misunderstanding, or an oops, or a miscommunication, or something like that, and we come up a week later and say, Hey, all week, we've been thinking about this now, maybe, you know, I mean, it really depends on the thing, but maybe that might be appropriate. But if we do that, and it's actually been a small miscommunication, or on the smaller side, or something that we should feel more comfortable talking about, that other person might not even remember it. Now, they might not even like an right, they might not know. So if they can't know or remember, it's really hard for them to now talk about it and collaborate on it. So the quicker we can do it, the better. And to that four, four, if you're the person who's having the bigger feeling about it, and the other person doesn't know, the longer you sit on it, the more likely you are to just not deal with it. Right, the more likely you are like eyes go talk to them on Friday. But you know, Friday came up, that we ended up going out for a happy hour together after work, you know, and we had a drink, we had some good food, and we were having a good time. And now I didn't want to break in. Now it's good to bring it up as soon as possible. Okay, so to help you be in a good place to start to take a moment, or to start to be able to share that is to you need to maybe take a moment with your own feelings. Some of us have lots of practice at doing this. And we can do it in, you know, a moment or two, some of us need a bit more time, some of us need a, you know, a few things to help this change. So I'm going to walk you through a few steps to help you be ready to share. Okay, so sometimes we need to pause. And for some people a pause might be, you know, a bit of a walk away a change in environment. So I think on the last episode, I gave an example of when, you know, me, and my partner had a bit of a miscommunication. And I was just not listening. And now we just needed a small change of like, we were, you know, of going from being on a bus where the miscommunication happened to being back in our hotel room. And, you know, having had a moment to like, you know, go the bathroom at you know, what, not get a drink of water, and then to be like, ah, yeah, that moment just did happen. Okay, sorry, sorry, like that kind of thing, right. But we just needed to change, it couldn't happen on the bus, right, those people around, we're, you know, that was just not a good moment for us to collaborate and work through things. So some people need a pause, which might be a change of place. Some people need a pause, which might just be some breaths might be to get a drink water might be to do something, some people, you know, some people's pause, if you're really just starting to do this, it's gonna take more time, it might take an hour or something, some people need, you know, a minute or two, five minutes, 10 minutes, I'm not sure where you're at, okay, but you can probably I think you can probably sense where you're at, think about it, try it out, see, okay, think about what you need to have that pause. Then when you're in your pause, you can name that feeling. Now, these are your eyes statements. So I'm feeling angry, I'm feeling confused and feeling that I'm feeling whatever disappointed, I'm feeling sad. I'm feeling you know, forgotten about whatever the feeling that you're having in that moment, you want to be able to name it. And you need to be open and honest and vulnerable with yourself when you are doing this. And you need to be using your eyes demons because these are the feelings that you are having. Okay? So make sure that you are being open and honest with the feelings that you are having some for some people, this is the first step and this is why they've been pushing feelings down. Because they don't actually want to admit that they're feeling annoyed. Because maybe they think like at that is kind of a small thing to do. Or I should not be mad at my partner or I should not feel annoyed at my partner. Because that, you know, I love that but you can love them and feel annoyed about them. The problem is when we hold on to that annoyance, then we make a layer of annoyance around us right in the moment in the small moments where we've had a miscommunication and just then you might feel a little dark, maybe feel a little agitated might feel a little prickly. That's okay, name your feeling and be open and honest about your feeling. Okay, and kind of that goes into that next step. And then you're gonna sit in that feeling. Some of us really try to avoid feeling uncomfortable or yucky or I caught like a wet a yucky blanket feeling sometimes there's a feeling I had, just like, ah, the whole situation has so many feelings in it and it feels like there's like, wet, like yucky blanket that's covering me and I'm trying to push it off, and I just can't get it off until I probably collaborate and solve the problem or come up with the next step to do right. So whatever that feeling is, you're gonna you can sit in it, it's okay. For some of us again,

Crystal Clark: 00:09:54

this process can just take a few moments for some of us. We might need to sit in this feeling for five I missed 10 minutes an hour, I don't know where you're at again, but it's okay to sit in this feeling. It's okay to cry. It's okay to growl. Whatever you need to do, right? Even if you're like, I don't feel anything, I'm just feeling numb, I'm feeling whatever it just sit net for a bit, that net. Okay, the next thing you're gonna do is you're going to accept that this is a feeling, accept that it's okay to be having this feeling. And that it's okay, if you have multiple feelings about someone, like I said, again, our overall feeling for our partner or significant other should be positive emotions, okay, we should be able to list those three to five things boop, off the top of our head that we love about them, that energizes us about them that we are so happy that they are our go to person, there's, we're so happy that they are our best friend or one of our best friends. We are very happy for that cat. We have good positive feelings for that. Right? But it's okay, just like we are with them friends, you know, sometimes they it could be like, out, we went through this situation, we just had this instance together. And I feel prickly about it, I feel annoyed about it, I feel whatever about it. It's okay to be madly in love with someone all the time. And to be like, ah, they just weren't, I feel like they weren't listening to me. That's okay. But we don't want to hold on to that where it's like, I'm madly in love with this person. And I feel always, every day, every moment they don't listen, right, those always statements are the ones that are not good for our close relationships. So we're going to accept that we can have different feelings in that moment. Okay, and that we're going to be sitting in that so that we're processing it so that it doesn't become a laundry list of complaints that suddenly pops into our head. Every time we run into a miscommunication every time we run into a problem. Okay, so we're going to accept these feelings that there's Oh, that they're okay to have. And we're going to practice self compassion. So this kind of goes with accepting the feelings that we're not going to feel guilt, shame, the bad person, that we're having these feelings, that's what often makes us avoid dealing with these feelings, because we feel like we're not allowed to have them, or we shouldn't have them, or we need to get over them really fast, okay, we're not gonna get over them really fast, or, well, we're going to process this, we are going to get over them, and let them go, because we're going to process them. Okay. And that end, right and not feeling guilt about it. That's what makes you not want to share, right? So we want to get around that. Okay. So once we've kind of gone through these steps, and we're kind of feeling in a place where I can share this in a kindful way, where I'm not going to yell this at the person. And I am ready that I can also hear their kinds of communication. Okay. This is the point where I'm going to feel I'm more ready to communicate and ready to hear the kinds of communications about the blip or misunderstanding whatever's happened. And I'm going to think about the best way to open these conversations up Now this actually could be a really fun conversation to have with your significant other right to have with your love of life of like, hey, how do we want to talk about this stuff with each other? How do we want to? What's the thing I should say, to open up a conversation like this? Because some people are very reluctant to the Can we talk? That's probably because there's a history of someone going, can we talk and then you get to hear all the things wrong that you did, and then only they get to talk. That's, that's why a lot of people like when they hear that, can we talk or that's talk later that's like, oh my gosh, no, that's hanging over me this whole time. And I actually I don't want to talk because I'm going to be told everything I did wrong. So let's find out what the better way to open it is it just to be like, some people like to jump right in, like my partner likes to jump right in, like, hey, so you know, I happen on the bus. But he'll just dive right in like that. But I now know, after it because I from previous relationships have been really scared to to be vulnerable in that way. And to bring up problems because they usually got turned back around on me in some way that I was I brought up the problem. And now eventually we talked through it. And now I was apparently also the cause of that problem. That's why we ran into it and that there was no accountability on the other person's part. But we all know that miscommunication is never 100% Just one person, right? Or, you know, a misunderstanding or oops, or whatever in this situation, that there's always two perspectives. Okay. So but and if we're both being open and honest and vulnerable with each of our perspectives, then there will be your know some truth and honesty found there and we will be able to come to an understanding and a collaboration about it. And so, you know, now that I have good practice with that person with my partner just diving in and be like, Yeah, so what happened back there? And I go, Oh, okay. Yeah, no, I know, it wasn't good to hear. I know, it wasn't smooth. But I know there was a thing. Yep. Okay. So the next step is to actually have that, you know, now we're in a comfortable way, we found a way away into the conversation, where we both feel sparked to be collaborative with each other, we're not being defensive. Okay, so we're not being defensive. Yeah, fantastic. Okay. Right. Because we don't, that's not if we're defensive for not being vulnerable. We're already, you know, feel like the other person's telling us wrong. And as we know, no one is wrong in these situations. We're tweaking them. We're problem solving, we're thinking about how to do better next time, this time has already happened. Who cares who was right or wrong. Like I said, miscommunication is never 100% One way or the other. So there actually is no right or wrong. What we're doing is we're tweaking and moving forward for next time, so that every time is a little bit better. Like I don't know if anyone's ever read the book, atomic habits here. But I love how he talks about getting 1% better at things. So don't do that. It needs to be that we're perfect communicators, or that we're perfect at doing this emotion, emotional processing thing right away, no, we're just trying to get even half a percent better a quarter represent that it's better. So that we are moving towards, you know, a place where we feel one day, we've got this, that magically, we just get there. It's like, ah, or all or 1% of added up. And now this does seem smoother. This does seem like a good way up quite a great way to move through the world together. That's what we're going for. And so in our collaborative conversation, we're really having a strategy of like, I, I feel you feel, my perspective, your perspective. And that's gonna bring us to a mutual a moment of mutual understanding, like, Ah, I see your perspective. Ah, you see my perspective. Okay, cool. What can we do next time? What could we tweak going forward? Now, sometimes you might already actually have a plan, and someone didn't use it. That's, that's actually sometimes my fault as we'll come up with a plan. And then I sometimes do I get too into the moment, I'm definitely person who needs to have a pause. Because I'll get too into the moment. And then I don't realize that I haven't used my plan. Or that this is the moment to use the plan. And so sometimes I need a reminder. And then sometimes, you know, my partner is, you know, he's not. And in the moment to give a reminder. And so now we have a reminder, afterwards in our conversation, like, ah, that's when I was supposed to use that. Okay. Right. So next time, next time, okay. But we've still had the conversation, we're still moving forward. And now the last piece is that we are going to have a moment of affection towards each other, right, have at least a few micro moments of affection towards each other. And that's going to be our repair piece. Right. So we've gone from feeling Prickly, we felt our prickly emotion, we have a plan we have understanding for moving forward. And now we're going to repair which means we're going to have a moment of affection with each other. So you know, if you've all listened to my, I think it's called no words podcast, no words needed. Episode. So the no worth needed episode that really talks about, you know, like, some people, we might not be ready to share work. So maybe, you know, some breathing together a moment where we're embracing and breathing or how you like to however you like to do your partner breathing together, right? Maybe, you know, a quiet snuggle on the couch. Maybe, you know, maybe we've used our words in this conversation, and we just want a physical moment of affection in some way. Okay, and it doesn't have to be, you know, that sexual makeup sex, that kind of physical affection. It can be anything that's that physical contact, that you know, you're sharing a moment of affection together. Okay? Some it could be something from your love languages. So

Crystal Clark: 00:19:43

like I said, some people are not ready for more words, that point but some people might might want to do words right or if that's their love language, or some people might want to do an act of service, right? Like, we just you know how dislike lattes? You know, I'm gonna make you I'm gonna make us a cup of tea, I'm going to make as a snack, I'm going to, you know, I heard the laundry go off while we were having our, our little collaborative talk. And I'm actually gonna go change it over for you. Okay? So something in our love language where we are coming back, and we're connecting in that affectionate way. That's really that last step to kind of close it off to show. We're back to Okay, we're back to a good spot with each other. Right? We're back to that neutral zone. And that's really going to help us to process that we are not stuck. We're not hiding. We are not avoiding that emotion. We have now come full circle. Right. We've gone through the Yankees. We've talked about we've felt it. We've now chatted about it. We've processed it. And now we're back to the hoorays. I don't know what the opposite of the Yankees would be right? But we're coming back to our positive emotional place with each other. That's what that showing of affection is going to do. That last step is really in this whole process is going to keep us sparked