Exploring The Challenges Of A Deeper Heart Connection
When a conversation about needs and how one partner can meet the other’s stays at the cognitive level of communication skills and techniques, it’s staying on the surface. But what feelings underlie these unmet needs? What history? There can be a tendency in your communication in a relationship to stay at the cognitive level, in our heads, in order not to have to feel, in our hearts, how deeply our needs matter to us, because it’s vulnerable to feel that.
It’s hard for people to talk about what they really want and to reveal what’s in their hearts. In couples therapy, ideally we go beyond identifying and communicating wants and needs to exploring the deeper levels: what kind of history, or possibly trauma, does each individual bring with them from the past that makes it so vulnerable to say what they want to say to their partner? What obstacles get in the way of people saying what they want and need?
Understanding Our Childhood Experiences
As children, we learn to orient outwards. We learn how much comfort we can depend on from our environment. The more we experienced comfort from our parents or our environment growing up, the easier it is to comfort ourselves as adults. Our feelings are relational. Do we feel like we can rely on others and ourselves to comfort ourselves? What drives us to rely solely on others or ourselves?
The answers to these questions stem from our own particular childhood experiences. Many people grew up in families where there wasn’t space for their emotions. Our experiences growing up become a template for how we will interact in our adult relationships. Beyond learning communication skills, improving our adult relationships and deepening our connection with our partner often comes down to giving ourselves permission to feel what we didn’t feel comfortable feeling as children. Only then can we be truly present with ourselves and our emotions.
Couples therapy is a place to get in touch with these feelings and explore them. What do you want to communicate to your partner but find that you are unable to say? When you get angry, or sad, or scared, what is the anger, or sadness, or fear about? What are you wanting when you communicate with them? It can be really scary to be this open and vulnerable. What drives the fear of engaging in the way that you want to engage? What is it that’s happening in your experience that makes it possible to engage in your relationship in ways that you find optimal?
Using The Present Moment To Reconnect With Our Wholeness
In couples therapy, I will invite you to explore and make space for the parts that have been hurt in the past. You will learn to reconnect in the present moment with the feelings you have not been able to express. From there, you can choose who and how you want to be in your life and improve your communication in a relationship.
Doing trauma work is not easy. It was never welcomed or modeled in our families. It wasn’t given space. Therapy is a space for that, a space where we get to know ourselves and to feel our feelings. Often when people don’t make space to allow their difficult emotions to be experienced, this can lead to numbing our positive emotions too. Trying to ward off the pain we are afraid to feel can make it hard to trust others with the vulnerability that is necessary for intimacy.
The capacity to be vulnerable is a precursor to intimacy which allows us to relax into the joy of love, connection, and relationships. There are many good reasons to do this challenging work. Making space for feelings of grief, sadness, and anger in your communication in a relationship opens up the possibility of experiencing the joy of connection and aliveness—all of these are interconnected.
Revisit Part I to learn more.
