Hypnotherapy Associates Blog

Mar 2014

• Relationships, Spring is in the air, Is it?!?....

  24
  Mar

  by on Mon 24 Mar 2014 15:30:07 GMT

  Well it’s that time of year, Spring is in the air, new beginnings, the Christmas and New Year have been and gone. We have reflected, looked at our relationships, our jobs – well ‘life’ and decided what do we need to change to feel better.  Or maybe get a different ‘body’, “If I shed that weight I will feel and look better” etc etc.

  I have been inundated with clients having relationship breakups, generally females getting ‘fed up’ with the men in their lives for not doing or ‘being enough’ so I wanted to share some of my wisdom around this subject.

  Is this something you resonate with?

  Do you sometimes feel drained by men and by some of your relationships with men? The first e-mails and phone calls? Even first dates? Do you feel you always have to be nice, courteous, and kind? And then beat yourself up when you're not?

  Maybe consider this?

  What if a man, instead of exhausting you, could add to your energy? What if a man can't actually fall in love with you at all when you're giving to him? What if, instead, a man falls hard in love with you when he’s the one giving to you?

  Relationships don’t need to be exhausting!

  If you feel that relationships are draining and exhausting, it's because you're working too hard on them…

  Being nice and kind doesn't help at all – it can actually push men away.

  Imagine your relationship is a boat. Who's doing the rowing? Is it you? Pretty much all by yourself?  Are you doing all the rowing? Most of us, if we really look at ourselves and our relationships honestly, would say "Yes, I'm rowing the boat”.

  If men and relationships seem difficult to you, chances are you're rowing hard, and he's just enjoying the cruise (unless he decides he'd rather jump ship.)

  Quite often we are scared that if we stop rowing, nothing will happen, and we forget that firstly, the natural flow of the ocean will move us in one direction or the other and secondly, that a man will willingly put the effort in when you give him the chance.

  A client I had recently was thinking of leaving her boyfriend of 2 years because he would not commit.  She felt she had no options other than to either leave him or to stay, exactly on his terms and hope it would somehow get better. I suggested another way, which was to stop doing everything she was doing that was pushing him away, and begin to listen, speak and just be in ways that would draw him in closer.

  Instead of trying to get him to commit to her, she could inspire and motivate him to want to commit to her. She could step back and let him step up to the plate.  That she could stop telling him what she needed and wanted and allow him to come towards her and in the process, we could address some of the behaviours of her wanting to be in control and having to continually succeed and what was the ‘drivers’ beneath these behaviours, feelings she had avoided for so long. Feelings she'd kept hidden from herself by working so hard to make the relationship work and also working so hard in life altogether!

  Intimacy and acknowledging our feelings can be scary….

  We're afraid a guy will see who we really are, especially the parts we believe we don't like about ourselves

  And some of us have so many parts we don't like that we spend most of our energy trying to keep those parts hidden, not just from men, but from ourselves, too.  Trying to look better, work harder and get the next promotion, be better in so many ways….  It’s exhausting!

  I asked my client to begin to notice the voice and ‘noise’ in her head. To listen and speak to herself in completely different ways, and to stop working so hard at her relationship and instead to turn her energy into doing what feels good to her.

  To ‘slow down’.  To take care of herself, to listen to her own body.  To ‘nourish’ herself and to speak to herself in ways that no longer undermined herself and her relationship and to treat herself as though she had boundaries. 

  I asked her to stop being too hard on herself and beating herself up - to ignore the voice inside her head screaming at her, strangling her, telling her what she could and couldn't do.   Could and couldn't have, mustn't, couldn't , shouldn't, want... I asked her to stop analysing, processing and thinking about what her man was doing and thinking.

  To stop thinking entirely!.... 

  To listen and speak from the heart.  To stop doing and to just be.

  So what happened next…. her boyfriend began to change, he began to enquire what she wanted, what she would like to do etc.  He started to feel differently towards her, like there was now space for him to be himself – to ‘step up to the plate’!

  Being instead of doing..

  Her boyfriend started calling her more, seeing her more and they started having more meaningful conversations. Suddenly, she realised it wasn't so much about her boyfriend's cluelessness, it was all about her feelings of not being OK unless she got what she felt ‘she wanted’ and how vulnerable that thought felt.

  She had been doing, doing all the time, rowing the boat of her relationship, trying to get it to the shore of commitment! All that doing wasn't getting her anywhere in the relationship. In fact, it was pushing her boyfriend further away.

  When she stopped doing, and focused on just being, suppressed feelings she'd avoided feeling showed up of fear, anger, confusion.  Sometimes we're angry because, really, we're scared. Scared of being left alone, of looking a fool, of not getting we want and then if we don’t get what we want we fear we’ll be unhappy so we try to avoid that by controlling our lives and relationships.

  We're really angry at our own fear and lack of boundaries. When we're closed off in some ways, we attract relationships that keep that kind of balance and tension.

  As you practice just "being", you may feel some things you have not felt for a long time.  An ‘openness’ to others, a deeper connection.  This can also feel vulnerable to start and unusual but I can assure you, the deeper, more meaningful connections you begin to make will allow some significant changes in your life and your relationships. Take it slow to start, don't let him come any closer than you're comfortable with, while you're relaxed and undefended.

  Also, in line with doing less is speaking less!! Us women are gifted communicators, but what I'm asking you to do is to learn to get comfortable with silence. Once you do, you're half way there.

  I want these examples to encourage you to give everything you've got to yourself, to give to yourself first, and then to simply give back to your man when he gives to you.  To practice just ‘being’, to let go of ‘over-thinking’ and enjoy his company moment by moment.

  The best part my client reported is the love she started to feel about herself.  She started to really like herself and feel a love for herself and although she didn’t know what the future may bring, she knew that whatever happened in her relationship, she was going to be just great as she was enjoying life moment by moment and from that, a positive future is always a possibility.

  If you would like some help with your relationship let me know and become one of thousands of females I have helped over the years find love.

  With all my love,

  Bonita