Relationship Savvy Dialogues

Giving Thanks

We all want the holidays to be beautiful and filled with love and joy. But, more often than not we are stressed by too much to do in too little time, obligations we would much rather avoid and unresolved family issues bubbling to the surface of our awareness or even erupting in our relationships. If any of these seem to come along with the holidays for you, we have some solutions to make this holiday a whole lot better.

Not enough time? – Create your idea of the perfect holiday season this year.  It is often difficult to observe how our culture affects our thinking. We often blindly follow the dictates of social custom without any deep thinking. These cultural or societal values show up in our minds as “supposed tos”. For example, “The holidays are supposed to be a time to give gifts” or “The holidays are supposed to be spent with the family.”

Want to know what beliefs are stored in your own mind? Try this simple exercise. Write at the top of a piece of blank paper:

 

The holidays are supposed to be _______________.

Then if you like, do this one.

During the holidays I must ______________.

Then with a free flow of consciousness pour your responses onto the page. Repeat the statement after each written response until you run out of responses.

Then read over what you have written with a discerning eye. Are the things you wrote absolutely true? Are you aware of where you got these ideas? Is there any merit to thinking beyond these ideas and re-creating your current version of the perfect holiday season for this year, unfettered by the rules of the past?

If so, then see how you can design this year’s holiday to be as enjoyable as possible. Discuss it with your loved ones and come to a mutual agreement for this season.

Too many obligations? Look to see how you can shorten the list. Are the obligations parties? Work related? A long gift list with shopping, wrapping and shipping involved? Are any of them optional? Could you have a good holiday season without fulfilling any of these obligations? Can you relieve yourself of any of the obligations without undesirable consequences? Can you decline any of them without feeling guilty?

Unresolved Family issues? Is there a way for you turn your complaints into requests?

For example, “My brother always spends a lot of money on gifts and I can’t compete with that,” could be translated into a request that sounds like a brief phone conversation where you say, “This year I’d like to suggest that we give one another cards where we acknowledge what we appreciate or love about one another. We could read them out loud around the tree. I think this could be a good way of making our love visible in a different way than the usual gift giving and I think it could make us feel even closer as a family, what do you think?”

Or another complaint could be, “My parents feel hurt if we don’t spend the holidays with them and it makes me feel guilty to not be with them.” This could be translated into “Mom, we would love to be with you during the holidays, yet John & I haven’t had any quality “alone time” for way too long. So I’m wondering if we could get together after the holidays for a family meal. Would you like to do that?”

Or the complaint that says, “My wife is always is so stressed doing things for other people that she is too tired to really enjoy herself,” could be translated into “Honey, I want us both to enjoy the holidays together this year. So, how about we ask everyone to pitch in and keep things as simple as possible. Would you help me put this idea into action this year?

Turning complaints into requests is a useful idea even after the holidays are over, and it takes some practice to get good at it. Hint, hint

For those of you in the United States, we wish you a most fulfilling and nurturing Thanksgiving!

written by Paul Cutright

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 

 

I captured this scene from our back deck as the sun was going down, illuminating the low hanging storm clouds and the windows of the building on the hill. This time of year the New Mexico skies present spectacular shows on a daily, even hourly, basis! Also, I made this with my iPhone!

written by Paul Cutright \\ tags: clouds, iphone, light, sky, storm, sunset

 

written by Paul Cutright \\ tags: blossoms, flowers, iphone, iphoneography, photo, photograph, Santa Fe, spring

Sandy and Robert had just broken up and it was a mess. They were part of a group of friends that went back fifteen years and the emotional tension was driving a wedge between all of them. They just couldn’t hang out together anymore.

One of the members practices EFT and offered to do some “trigger work” for the whole group. Each person identified what was hurting them most. For Sandy, it was watching Robert be affectionate with others in the group. For Linda, it was the familiar conflict of having to choose between the people she loves, something that went back to her parent’s divorce when she was a child. For Stacy, it was feeling helpless to help. For Robert, it was guilt because he was the one who initiated the breakup.

Each friend clarified what was troubling them and held it in mind while they rated the level of intensity of emotional pain on a 0 to 10 scale, 10 being as emotionally intense as it could be and 0 being no sense of distress at all.

They all sat together focusing on their individual issue and using the EFT procedure, which includes tapping gently on the end points of the major meridians on their face, torso and hands. After three rounds, in about ten minutes, they all stopped and rated their intensity level again. All but one of them had experienced a significant drop in their emotional pain and reported relief from the physical discomfort that accompanies relationship pain. Emotions can cause headaches, nausea, tightness in the face, chest, stomach and throat and a variety of other physical symptoms.

They decided to do several more rounds to see how much better it could get. Several more levels of improvement occurred for each of them. Most of their levels had dropped to a 0 or 1 and a few others were hovering at3 or 4. EFT had treated the invisible perturbations in their individual energy fields that were generating the group tension. This gave significant and rapid relief because they were treating the cause, not just the symptoms.

After the EFT treatments, about 45 minutes, they spontaneously started to discuss how each of them had been affected by the “breakup”. Instead of everyone feeling heavy and stilted, they were all laughing again, joined in the familiar camaraderie that had kept them together for fifteen years.

Our own experience with this invisible “whateveritis” has shown up in our own relationship since the very beginning when we first met. And it has continued to show up in our work with relationships, deepening our own sensitivity to fluctuations in the field.

If you do not have certain distinctions about what actually causes relationships to be the way they are, the way to healing, repairing and evolving relationships can appear impossible or difficult, at best. And without these distinctions many relationship interventions are more like a band aid on a gushing artery.

We’ve worked with families, companies, teams and communities in which there were relationship challenges between two or more people that had a significant negative effect on the entire group. Families have been torn apart, production in companies negatively impacted and communities damaged for lack of understanding how a single unresolved issue between people can affect and damage the whole.

It happens all the time and it doesn’t have to. In our view, this level of relational sophistication and maturity is actually the leading edge for human evolution.

All of our relationships exist in an invisible field of energy that can be calm and stable, in a state of homeostasis. But when there are powerful emotions between two or more people, those emotions, such as anger, sadness, resentment, hurt feelings, etc. ripple out through the field, having an effect on everyone involved. The more people suppress or deny their feelings the crazier the field gets which has an undesirable effect on everyone else involved.

The illustration on the left depicts a phenomenon called “emotional tanking”. Click on illustration to enlarge

The story above is similar to the one we shared in our last post and is typical of what EFT can do. It is a deceptively simple and powerful tool for healing relationship issues of any kind. We use it all the time in our coaching practice and in our relationship with each other.

What most people fail to realize or know how to look for, is the earliest similar incident to what is going on in the present that appears to be causing emotional pain. Nine times out of ten, present time emotional pain has its roots in our childhood and our relationship with our parents and siblings.

It’s just that the present time incident is so overwhelmingly compelling that it really looks like that is the problem, when in fact the present time event “triggered” the  pre-existing, unresolved event from the past. The force and velocity of the feeling is historical. When you deal with the deeper historical level, the current issue loses its steam, as well.

It is one thing to “know about” this as a concept and another thing to “know” it as an opportunity to clear the past with tools designed to heal at the deepest level possible. Once it is cleared and resolved, your own energy field becomes less affected by difficult situations in the present. This allows you to be more resourceful, loving of yourself and others and a more powerful creator of your life and relationships.

EFT is an evolutionary tool that clears unwanted emotions. It isn’t always clear to people that their ability to adapt to accelerated change is directly related to the density of their “pain body”. The pain body holds the unfinished business from the past that often determines your perceptions of the now.

Because of these phenomena we often can’t see new and powerful possibilities in difficult situations. Now is a time for all of us to see clearly “what is” so we can make wise choices for ourselves and the people we love.

© Paul and Layne Cutright

Resources: The Web of Life by Fritjof Capra  and The Field by Lynn McTaggert

written by Paul Cutright

“We are stardust, we are golden, and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” ~ Joni Mitchell

This is Easter weekend, a time for the celebration of renewal, rebirth and resurrection. This time we call Easter is actually a blend of the secular and religious, deriving as it does from a myriad of cultures dating back to ancient Egypt, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Italy and Persia leading up to Judaism and Christianity. 

All of these cultures had central figures of legend who died and were resurrected centuries before the birth of Jesus. Even bunnies and eggs were associated with fertility and new life in Spring by Romans, Persians, Egyptians and Babylonians. Though they were probably not made of chocolate and sold in stores as we do today!

The true meaning of Easter is to be found within your own heart and celebrated in ways that bring you joy in feeling connected to the Universal rhythm of life as resurrection is made plain in newly budding and blooming nature; a nature in which we, as human beings, are as embedded as a fetus in the womb.

It is in this spirit that we share with you a story of the miraculous resurrection of a marriage relationship that was experiencing its own kind of death.

 John & Lisa Heal the Deep Pain of Infidelity in Record Time

When “John” and “Lisa” walked through our door together, it was the first time they had seen each other since his recent affair was revealed. It had been an ongoing affair, but Lisa had just found out only a week ago while John was away on a business trip.

John was in California and Lisa was on the other side of the country. She was going along in her life as usual when she had a strong impression he was having an affair. Without much thought she picked up the phone and heard herself ask him if it was true. He knew he had been caught and though his first impulse was to lie, he confessed instead.

Lisa sat there frozen in pain. The collision of feelings left her speechless. Disbelief, hurt, anger, wanting to strike out, fear and dread sent seismic shock waves through her whole body. John was in a panic. He loved his wife and never wanted to hurt her. He thought she would never find out. His mind raced trying to find the right thing to say. He kept running into dead ends. The silence over the phone line was deafening.

“We’ll talk later,” Lisa said and hung up. John heard the click, awash in a sea of his aloneness.

Lisa then called us and said she felt like killing him and asked for an appointment. The arrangements were made and within a week she flew in. John, already in California, drove down the coast, showing up at the same time for their session with us.

It was taking everything they had to appear calm and rational on top of a boiling cauldron of relationship pain. They looked as though their emotions would burst out of control at any moment. She loved him but felt betrayed, angry and hurt. He felt guilty, confused and he didn’t want to confront her anger. It was a very strained situation, to say the least.

Meridian Tapping Techniques

We worked with each of them separately, for about an hour, using a meridian tapping technique to calm and heal their pain. We have been using meridian tapping since the late 1990’s. It is a form of Energy Psychology that uses the invisible meridian lines that are used in Chinese acupuncture. But, the technique is to gently tap on the end points of the major meridian lines with your fingertips. The tapping activates what we call the emotional immune system.

Literally, in a few minutes our clients are restored to emotional balance and wellbeing. They are then free to access the more resourceful parts of their brains and think through problems calmly. They are in a good state of mind where they can be coached to locate the “learning opportunity” in the most difficult of situations and find workable solutions.

Within an hour Lisa had shifted from wanting to punish him and hurt him as badly as she had been hurt, to wanting to take responsibility for her part in the marriage deteriorating to such a place. She wanted to stop feeling victimized.

John’s feelings of guilt were so intense he could sense the part of him that wanted or needed to be punished to get some relief. The meridian tapping helped him work those feelings out and forgive himself enough to stop feeling so defensive and more able to support Lisa through her feelings.

After the individual work, they sat on the couch looking into each other’s eyes. Their energy was now completely different. It wasn’t that the problem had been resolved but they had defused their emotional pain sufficiently so they were able to think clearly. They were able to be in one another’s presence and look at each other without feeling like they were going to pop out of their skin.

They were then ready for us to coach them. There were a lot of questions asked and answered to bring clarity to how the whole thing happened and what they wanted to do about it. This situation had the potential to be a devastating crisis that ended the marriage or be a catalyst for more intimacy and understanding and perhaps an even stronger marriage than before.

After a total of about three hours they left holding hands and gazing softly into one another’s eyes. They had essentially fallen back in love with each other. Now, that’s a lot of territory to cover in three hours. Of course, they had work to do when they got home, but they were able to overcome a huge hurdle in a short period of time. They were able to gain enough perspective to be able to see this as an evolutionary learning opportunity and to embrace it as such.

Feelings of Gratitude

When they left, we talked about how grateful we are to have a tool so powerful that it can produce truly remarkable, some would say miraculous, results in minutes. We have been relationship educators and coaches since 1976 and we have a reputation for being on the leading edge of the latest theories and techniques for working with relationships. Even we were somewhat surprised at what we had just seen happen.

What did we do that allowed John and Lisa to cover so much painful emotional ground in such a short period of time? We used a meridian tapping technique you may have heard of or be familiar with, called Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT). We learned EFT from the man who created it, Gary Craig, and we’ve been using very successfully since about 1997.. We were certified as EFT Masters in January 2006. EFT has transformed our coaching practice and allowed us to serve people all around the world working with them over the phone.

Relationship education and coaching has been a passionate commitment of ours for over 35 years. We are continually on the lookout for easier, more effective tools and methods for helping our clients. EFT is the simplest and most potent tool we have discovered, so far. The kind of miracle we relate here in John and Lisa’s story has become common place in our work with others.

EFT is easy to learn in a relatively short period of time and can become a life-long skill that you can use for releasing fears and phobias, dissolving anxiety, overcoming self-sabotage, fear of meeting new people, public speaking, insomnia and so much more.

If you have followed our blog for any length of time, you may recall our sharing about the incredible challenges we have faced in the months since Paul’s emergency open heart surgery last summer. We can tell you right now that the physical and emotional pain we have gone through individually and in our relationship was significantly mitigated by our regular (often daily) use of EFT, both with each other and alone.

In this time of great transition and uncertainty in which much of what we hold dear seems to be being stripped away, we need powerful tools that can help us navigate the unknown as we are being reborn into a new life in which it is safe to love, to trust and to embrace the unknown as the very crucible of our own resurrection into new life.

“We are stardust, billion year old carbon, we are golden, caught in the devil’s bargain and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.” ~ Joni Mitchell

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
© 2012 Paul & Layne Cutright

written by Paul Cutright