Communication the front line of Love
Inside our empathic sanctuary, we seek to re-discover the natural healing rhythm of our life flow, trusting that each wave of darkness will ultimately return us to the light.
Trusting our rage to return us to peace.
Trusting our shame to return us to self-love.
Trusting our fear to return us to faith.
Trusting our sorrow to return us to joy.
And trusting the guiding light within to lead us on, ever closer to our true nature.
Communications skills are vital for new healthy relationships. Starting with attentive listening skills. What are the distressful emotions that scare the addict so much. What are the feelings which make us bolt and run…especially early on in sobriety? It helps loads when journal-ling or during intimate sharing to verbalize the exact emotion so others can related, empathize, care, and validate during feedback. Listening is vital in any relationship.
Four Categories
1. Anger: frustrated, annoyed, irritated, agitated, enraged, furious, resentful.
2. Shame: Embarrassed, guilty, humiliated, small, low, unworthy, bad,
3. Fear: Afraid, concerned, nervous, tense, insecure, worried, anxious, terrified, shocked, scared.
4. Sadness: Hurt, lonely, abandoned, rejected, unwanted unimportant, put down ignored, pushed aside, neglected, left out,sad
5. Mixed Emotion: Dominated, controlled, tormented, tortured, confused, betrayed, attacked, disrespected, helpless, hopeless, unfairly treat
Become aware of communication traps: We retrain our usual tendencies and channel our expressions of discomfort in a different way. Instead of blurting out our demands or accusations without any amount of reflection we examine our own feelings. Strong reactionary feelings seldom originate in the present tense situations. We avoid becoming mired in toxic battles.
We detect our feelings are too intense. Our impulse is to lash out! Or to escape and run. We STOP and do self exploration. Instead of trying to get our partner to see our point of view and change behaviors to make us feel better our aim is to contact and release the feelings rooted in our past in order to deal more effectively with the present.
We need only accept the premise that something from our past has been triggered and seek to uncover it. If the anger is too strong we call an empathic listener or journal the feelings. We can also learn and use simple anger release techniques.
BY TAKING OWNERSHIP OF OUR FEELINGS WE STOP THE ARGUMENT.