Most of us take our relationships for granted.  We describe them with the now hip phrase “It is what it is.”  We do not do much to intentionally care for them.  We may post a “Happy Birthday” on Facebook or send a card during the Holiday.  But mainly, we let them be what they are.  They grow or die as we go about living our lives focusing on other things.

This being said, I am closing this discussion about relationships and self-care by repeating what I said at the beginning.  While we cannot control most aspects of our relationships, we are accountable to ourselves and others with how we take care of ourselves in relationships.

Staying InTouch, InMind, and InSoul about our relationships allows us to take stock from time to time.  When we are busy with work or family, we may lose sight of the people on the margins of our lives.  Longtime friends may slip away.  Family members may become part of the background.  Even our close family and friends may step back into the shadows of our lives.  We may wake up one morning and find ourselves terribly alone, isolated, and yearning to sit with an old friend over a cup of coffee. There is a natural ebb and flow in most relationships, but when all our relationships seem to be slipping away it is time to spend some time and energy reclaiming those relationships that mean the most to us.

Draw folks into your circles, forgive and re-member them, cultivate your own soul awareness and capacity for empathy with them. 

Be InTouch.  Keep InMind.  Cultivate InSoul.

We will return to the first exercise we did with our relationships.  Return to your list of friends and family from your contacts and ask, once again, “How do they make you feel?”

Draw Three columns on a blank page and write “I need to be InTouch”, … InMind, or … InSoul at the head of each column.  Now go through your list and add each name to one of the columns. 

This will give you a plan for self-care over the next little while as you focus on tending to your relationships. When it comes to relationships, when we take care of each other we are also taking care of ourselves.

Growing Together, Not Apart

10 Ways Relationships Help Individuals Grow

Self-Care in Relationships

In the first Self-Care Note on relationships I asked about how our remembering someone makes us feel?  Sounds rather straight forward, doesn’t it! Our feelings about someone seem to be a basic bit of information.  We should be able to answer that question off the top of our head. Unfortunately, feelings have very little to do with any part of our head.  Feelings live and breathe and fill our soul, not our head.  And this makes feelings much more complicated than we generally want to admit.

The head tries to boil our feelings down to descriptive words like mad, sad, glad.  But the vocabulary of feelings takes many pages of three columned, tiny, single-spaced words and short phrases.  For most of us, that vocabulary is very limited.   Yet we all experience multihued feelings that leaves us shrugging our shoulders when we try to describe them.  Therapist are talking more and more about “Emotional Intelligence” (in my opinion a poor description of the study) to describe this struggle we have with feelings.  (See the link below for a Wikipedia article on the topic.)  I prefer the term, InSoul to describe our ability to identify and address the feelings that rise from deep within our soul.

InSoul, or Soul Awareness, is a skill that takes time to learn.  We all feel our feelings.  But to be able to identify and acknowledge them requires an intimate contact with our inner lives.  We may tell ourselves that we feel a particular way because others expect us to feel that way.  We may convince ourselves that we are experiencing a feeling because it is in our best interest to do so.  Or we may refuse to admit that we are feeling anything at all because to do so would make us vulnerable to others and perhaps open us to a flood of uncontrollable emotions.  It takes more than feeling our feelings.  We need to be able to accept responsibility for them.  We need to be InSoul.

There is a great deal that needs to be said about being InSoul but my space is limited.  I will leave you with three brief thoughts to help you consider your own ability to be InSoul. 

First, your feelings belong to you.  No one gave them to you.  No one caused them.  They rose within your soul because of who you are, who you were, and who you are becoming.  Own your authentic feelings.  They are your most human side.

Second, recognize that you do not control your feelings.  You cannot make them or make them go away.  They are a fact of your very being.  Feelings happen and there is nothing we can do about them.  Ignoring them will not make them go away.  They are still there waiting for an opportunity to express themselves.

Third, we can control how we respond to our feelings.  We cannot stop the anger, but we can control how we express it.  By accepting the responsibility for how we express them, we can minimize the damage that they can cause and maximize the benefits they bring to a healthy, well- lived life.

To be InSoul in a relationship is to be able to identify and respond appropriately to the feelings that are stirred within us during a relationship.  Healthy, life-giving relationships can only develop when we are InSoul.

Have you ever sat with someone who was deeply upset and you began to feel you stomach tighten?  Have you ever shared tears with someone who lost someone deeply important to them?  It is an unstated fact that many times emotions are contagious.  We begin to experience the sensations and emotional states of other people’s feelings when we have a close, empathic relationship.  This sharing of feelings is a key to the closest relationships we have but can also be shared with others to whom we relate in a meaningful way.  This soul-to-soul communication makes it imperative that we develop a keen awareness of our own internal state.  It leads to a better understanding of ourselves and of those around us.  It promotes meaningful relationships and helps us to avoid destructive relationships.  Our tips this week will offer ways to get in touch with our own feelings and the waves of feelings that come out of empathetic relationships.

Developing Soul Awareness  

What is my body saying?

Next time you are surprised by your reaction to someone or something, do a quick body check.

Is my face or neck flushed and hot?  Are my fists clenched?  Am I leaning into or out of the conversation?  Is my mouth dry? Are my eyes leaking?  Am I standing slumped or fully erect?  Is my breathing increased?  Is my stomach tight?  Am I smiling? 

What might these physical facts say about my emotional state?  Am I surprised by what I thought I was feeling and what my body is suggesting?

Developing Empathy

Watch a TV drama with the sound turned off.  Pay attention to the story and observe the actor’s physical actions. Silently name the emotions you are observing.  Pay attention to how your body is reacting to these actors and the conversation taking place in your own mind.

For some people empathy is second nature.  For others, it is an acquired skill.  If you find yourself struggling to empathize with others return to the exercise on developing your own soul awareness and seek to better understand your own emotions.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Body Language

Developing Empathy

We use language to capture and recall memories in our minds.  These memories become foundations of our relationships.  If we have a bad first impression of someone then it is unlikely that we will develop a close relationship.  But, if our later contacts are more positive, they may overwhelm that initial memory and we could end up marrying them.  (Sounds like a TV movie, doesn’t it!)  Memories that grow out of our experiences with people are held and processed in our minds.

However, a memory is more than a narrative of what happened.  It is a re-lived experience that is colored by the remembered sensations and feelings that surrounded the event.  We remember far more than we can easily recall.  A new encounter that occurs in a hurry because were late for work may be tainted with a feeling that the person was holding us up.  The relationship never grew because of a negative first impression.  It may be further shaped by a memory of the time the boss chewed us out for being late to work.  Every relationship is made up of remembered stories about previous encounters with the person that has been shaded and shaped by all kinds of other memories.

Every relationship develops through remembering.  At first, the relationship grows out of a pre-story or prejudice.  We like blondes or dislike people like that annoying cousin.  As we come to know someone, this pre-story changes and it becomes their story.  Their story grows with each encounter as the mind makes connections between stories.  This “storyline” then becomes the foundation for the feelings that create the relationship.  The more intimate the relationship, the more finely tuned are the memories and storyline.

Learning to be more attentive to these “storylines” is to be InMind of those who are part of our lives.  By being InMind of our relationships we are able to nurture those relationships that bring us joy and step away from those relationships that take away our joy.  Those relationships that become part of our lives join in to the internal conversations we have with ourselves, even after they have left us physically.  Relationships are integral to the human spirit.  Good self-care requires that we be InMind of those relationships that have the most influence over us.

Healthy relationships foster love and trust within us.  To be InMind of our relationships is to be able to identify and cultivate relationships that bring us greater capacities for love and trust.  As long as a relationship makes love and trust possible, then we can simply ride the wave.  Continue to celebrate and foster that relationship.  Keep themclose and InMind.  But, when a relationship begins to create feelings of distrust or apathy, it is time to take a couple of steps.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is NOT forgetting a bad experience with someone or telling them that it was okay that they hurt you.  Forgiveness is seeking to let go of the pain they caused you.  You will still remember the event.  But you seek to find ways to release yourself from the pain it causes you.  You do this by re-membering the relationship.

Re-membering

Spend some time with the memories in the relationship.  Let those memories lead you.  Perhaps you can find new insights into why they behaved as they did.  This is not to excuse them for their behavior but to understand and re-frame your own response to them.   If we are abused by an alcoholic, we may find it easier to let go of the pain by understanding their alcoholism.  This does not mean that they need to step back into the relationship, especially if the person remains an active alcoholic.  But that insight becomes part of the story and enables us to release much of the pain in the memory.  We have re-membered the story.

Look at your list of folks that you hold in the circles of your life and ask yourself if they help you to love and trust or do they foster distrust and bitterness or apathy.

Do you want to be InTouch with any of these people?  Do you want to draw them closer?  If so, then bring them InMind.  If not, then move them farther out. 

Look for the pain they cause you and explore the possibility for the need for forgiveness. 

Re-member the stories and look for ways to re-member their story?

If you have relationships that cause you deep pain, I suggest you seek out a trusted friend or therapist to help you re-member the story.  This process is never easy but it can help you build a community of loving, trusting people around you that will help you to grow in joy and hope.

The Power of Friendship

Forgiveness

Things that Shape our Memories

Multiple studies have demonstrated that human contact is an essential part of the human experience.  The largest organ in our body is our skin.  It is designed to receive and to share human contact.  It allows us to know that we are not alone.

Along with human touch, we also can sense another’s presence through Spatial Contact.  Physical touch is primarily a skin sensation interpreted through the mind and soul.  Spatial contact is a multisensory experience of hearing, seeing, and feeling a presence interpreted through the mind and soul as well.  Together, physical touch and spatial contact allow us to enter into and participate in relationships.

These capacities come in many varieties.  There is the tender touch of the lover and the abusive touch of the attacker.  There is a comforting presence of a friend and a threatening presence of an enemy.  These senses allow for one person to communicate non-verbally with another non-verbally.  They assist us in assessing whether a relationship is healthy or unhealthy. The mind remembers previous contacts and interprets this contact.  The soul then responds with a feeling that will guide us in making a decision about whether to pursue or break off the relationship.

Physical touch and spatial contact also allow us to develop the most intimate and close relationships possible.  They permit a closeness that language fails to capture.  Touch and spatial contact are key to developing and maintaining proper distance in our relationships. 

There are concentric zones of safe space around our bodies that no one may enter without our permission.  There are limits to the places on our bodies for physical touch.  Each of us are responsible for permitting or denying Physical Touch and Spatial Contact.  In doing so we establish and manage the relationships that surround us.

Therefore, self-care requires that we know and protect our physical and spatial boundaries.  Doing so not only protects us from abuse, but it can also foster a sense of security and well-being.  We can use physical touch and spatial contact not only to keep some people “out” but also allow other folks “in.”  In the process, we bring into our lives people who nurture and care for us.  We discover that we are not alone!

InTouch is a practice that allows us to become more sensitive and aware of our physical and spatial comfort zones.

First, remember the feelings that occurred the last time someone “invaded your personal space.”  That sense of alarm serves as a warning.

Second, draw a series of four concentric circles on a piece of paper at roughly 2 inch distances.  Place a dot in the center.  You are the dot and it represents physical touch.  The 1st zone represents intimate relationships, or Kissing Zone.  The 2nd Zone represents the close friends Zone.  The 3rd Zone represents acquaintances, or Conversational or Zone.  The 4th Zone represents the public, or Business Zone.  Beyond the last circle represents the Stanger Zone, or Walk Across the Street Zone.  The actually physical distance may vary depending on the relationship you have with those around you but we each have these zones.

Third, using your Facebook, Address book, or other list of friends, place their initials in the various zones.

Last, over the next week remain mindful of these zones as you encounter these people and begin to recognize the distances that you maintain between yourself and other people.  Do you experience any of the Alarm Feelings with these people?  Do you have some folks in the wrong zones?  Are your boundaries too close or just about right?  How aware are you of the feelings that these people’s physical presence trigger in your soul?

A bonus step might include considering the Physical Contact that you allow in your life.  Which of these trigger an Alarm feeling? Which ones trigger a sense of comfort?  Which one’s trigger a far deeper desire for closeness?  Are your boundaries just about right or is there some confusion in them?  If you have any concerns about these, seek out a trusted friend who can help you sort them out.

Defining Personal Space

Personal Touching Zones

Personal Boundary Setting