Today we are talking about the skill of listening. Listening is the ability to focus on and maintain attention to what another person is communicating with the goal of accurately understanding them. What does it look like to be a skilled listener? Why is this important in relationships? That is what we’re unpacking today on the Embrace the Mud Podcast.

We are in a series called Essential Relationship Skills and we’re talking about the things we need to be able to do in our relationships in order to maximize the potential for connection and intimacy. We are setting the series up by focusing on foundational skills first— yesterday we addressed self-awareness and today we are talking about Emotion Regulation. Emotion Regulation is the part of emotional intelligence that is the ability to manage our own emotions. When we have good emotional regulation, we control our feelings, our feelings do not control us. Why is emotion regulation important in relationships and how do you cultivate this skill? That is our topic for today. 

To kick off our new series, Essential Relationship Skills, we are talking about Self-Awareness— a foundational and essential skill for forming deep and authentic bonds with others. What is self-awareness? How do you cultivate it? What are some pitfalls of self-awareness? How does it improve relationships? Those are the questions we are answering in today's episode. 

Sources:

What Self-Awareness Really Is

Today’s final weed is Judgment. When we judge our partners, we are forming negative opinions about them or about how they live or how they are that are based on our own standards and beliefs about how we think they should be or live. Why do we judge our partners? What’s the impact? What can we do instead so that we can connect and experience deep intimacy with the person we love? That's what we are discussing today on the Embrace the Mud Podcast.

Today’s weed is stonewalling— Stonewalling is essentially a refusal to engage or respond. Someone who is stonewalling has shut down and become silent and withdrawn. What causes someone to stonewall? How does it impact relationships? What can be done instead? That’s what we are talking about today on the Embrace the Mud Podcast.

Today’s weed is shame—shaming in relationships is a particularly egregious form of criticism or contemptuous behavior that communicates unworthiness to the other person. It invalidates them  as a human being. It essentially says: you don’t matter. What does shame actually look like in relationships? Why does it happen? And what can be done instead? That’s what we’re covering today on the podcast.

Today’s weed is blame: the habit of fault finding. When something happens, why do you automatically want to assign blame, how does this impact relationships, and what’s a better way to respond when something negative occurs? That’s what we are covering today on the Embrace the Mud Podcast.

Today’s weed is defensiveness. The Gottman Institute has defined defensiveness as "righteous indignation or innocent victimhood in an attempt to ward off a perceived attack". Why do we get defensive, why does defensiveness harm relationships, and what can we do instead of being defensive? These are the questions we’re answering in this episode. 

Today’s weed is Ambivalence— having mixed feelings about the relationship; feeling uncertain about wanting to be in it. Ambivalence is a relationship killer, and therefore a weed that needs to be pulled. What causes chronic ambivalence, why is it such a problem,  and what can be done about it? Let's discuss!

On this episode of the Embrace the Mud Podcast we are talking about criticism. Criticism is one of the four horseman, a group of 4 negative behaviors determined by John and Julie Gottman to be particularly destructive to couples and the behaviors that they repeatedly saw happening in relationships that would eventually fail.

What is criticism? Why does it hurt your relationship? How can you communicate without criticizing? These are the questions we're answering in this episode.