Sean Healy: Tools

This episode looks at some of the little focuses that successful people prioritise in pursuit of their goals.

Life is challenging sometimes and staying on track can be a task all of its own. In this episode we look at a few touchpoints that if consistently engaged in can bring great reward.

I hope you enjoy the program and find it helpful.

This episode draws on some of the work of Bowen Family systems author and therapist Roberta Gilbert. The episode looks at some of the navigating principles that we can employ to support in the roller coaster journey of seeing our children successfully through to adulthood. How do we prepare in advance for the amazing highs and anxiety-provoking lows.

How can we ensure that we are building our children up and not unintentionally undermining their long term success?

I hope that you find this episode a helpful resource and certainly recommend checking out the book: Connecting With Our Children by Roberta Gilbert.

If we are serious about having long term healthy relationships then we need to be able to have potentially challenging conversations. Even the most successful relationships are faced from time to time with anxiety, stress and temptation. Life has a way of sometimes making our best-laid plans and ideas look trivial.

As a couple, can we commit to being willing to work on our fight form? How as a couple do we improve bringing up the topics that are tough and risk a heated exchange? Can we work as a team on how we could have handled that last argument better? Are there daily tasks that are a source of irritation that we are trying to ignore? How long can we ignore those daily irritations before they build into a major explosion in the relationship that is way harder to work through?

This episode explores some of these questions and more.

Little successes achieved consistently over time can build themselves into something quite significant. It is important to recognise and celebrate the little wins along the way. If we have multiple goals over multiple areas of our life then we can draw on success in one area to motivate us in another area where things don't seem to be moving as quickly as we would like.

Additionally, as success can compound into something amazing over time little stresses, friction points and sources of anxiety left unaddressed build too. If we try to avoid what we know at some point will become unavoidable then you are really doing yourself, and possibly others, a great disservice. Life can be challenging enough sometimes without waiting till our backs are against the wall. As uncomfortable as it can be it is best to get in as early as possible whilst we aren't too emotionally reactive or our resentment has built to a point where it has reduced our thinking clarity.

Give the little wins their due and celebrate them. Give the little stresses their due and address them before they can grow.

This episode looks at the compounding of both success and stress. I hope you find it helpful!

This episode focuses on an aspect of relating patterns known as Emotional Cutoff. When we choose or feel forced to cut someone out of our lives. There are times to go low or no contact of course, and with certain more low conscious types, it’s probably important.

However, when we cut someone out of our lives or refuse any contact it might reduce the immediate sense of anxiousness but add to long term friction. We may not talk to someone for months and then reunite without addressing the original issue, or we may geographically distance but still find that we mentally obsess over the person even though we don't see or speak with them directly.

This episode explores a number of elements and potential consequences of emotional cutoff.

Continuing on with exploring how we do us in relating and in particular what is my contribution to us? Spotting one's own contribution particularly when relational anxiety is up, isn't always easy.

We can become aware of how seemingly emotionally reactive our partner is whilst not being tuned into how we are coming across. We can become critical and focused on point-scoring at the expense of the relationship’s overall health. We can focus on what our partner needs to do rather than on what I need to do.

In times of relational harmony, have we taken the time as a couple to agree to the guidelines of how specifically we will argue? Importantly if we have, then under pressure do we adhere to them or feel we are justified to break the rules we set up.

Can we step away if things are amplifying unproductively and just as importantly finish challenging discussions later rather than sweep them under the carpet?

Generally, when you listen to couples going through relational challenges you can hear a fixation on their partner's present shortfalls or an over fixation on their own while their partner is faultless.

We can overly blame other or overly blame self but any attempt to adjust in a relationship from that limited focus alone is likely to only (at best) temporarily relieve relational stress. Short term, emotionally reactive adjustments that are designed to get back to momentary relational calm can be actually building to long term relational strain and distance.

This episode looks at one of the automatic patterns utilised by couples to manage intimacy, closeness, anxiety and general family system pressure. If we can observe relating patterns and label them then we are at a choice point about what, if anything, we would like to do. Can I clearly see my part and your part in this dynamic from a calm position?

It takes two to engage in a relational pattern and often a host of supporting others. This episode pattern of relating is focused on over-functioning and under-functioning in relationship. I hope you find it helpful!

Ask me to be present for another person in their moment of perceived failure and I am there with love, compassion, support and nurture. I’m full of encouragement and able to see effectively where they have done better than they presently believe.

However, in my moments of perceived failure, I take a very different approach! The automatic go to seems to be one of critical self-disgust, self frustration and anything else I can think of in the moment to metaphorically punish myself for! It's amazing how quickly I can go historical and bring up a mountain of other perceived failures to throw in my own face! Apparently, this is meant to help, ha, ha!

How can I get to more self-compassion, self-support and self-love? It is quite possibly in the moments where I most want to deny myself my own loving compassion that it is most needed.

The idea that the more we love someone the more skilled at mind reading we become causes more problems than it solves!

"You should know what I need if you really loved me!" This isn't helpful and in part stems from childhood where it was our parent's job to interpret our requirements. Depending on your family system that often didn't work so well either!

Healthy dynamics involve communication and willingness to clarify. As we grow and mature our needs change and also how specifically our needs get met.

It is fantasy to think that even with the best fit person for you, that they will magically always be in alignment with you and one step ahead of your requirements. Something of that nature is probably closer to unhealthy enmeshment than to separate adults willingly forming a relationship together and continuing to commit to the relationship as it evolves over time.

This episode looks at how the mind-reading assumptions that can appear in relationship dynamics get in the way of healthy relationship communication.

One indicator that you may need to access the kind of relationship you are in is seemingly radical relating swings. The relationship brings you both the highest highs and lowest lows. How can someone treat me so well one moment and so horribly the next?

When they are good and showering us with attention it feels amazing and then when they withdraw and freeze us out it feels like such a lonely and desolate place.

How can one person be so charming and then so hateful? The confusion that ensues can engulf us and keep our attention distracted from the fact that they say all the right things and do none of them!

This episode looks at the emotional roller coaster effect of these radical swings in relating and their potential impact on our well being.