#123 3 Relationship Superpowers
In today's episode, we're unpacking three relationship superpowers (which frankly are also life superpowers!). These are the skills and mindset pieces that I wish for everyone to be cultivating as they walk the path of becoming more secure in themselves and in their partnerships.
Mastering the Relationship Superpowers: Discernment, Humility, and Perspective
In the landscape of relationships, certain qualities act as superpowers, allowing us to navigate the complex terrain of emotional connections with greater resilience and harmony. These so-called relationship superpowers — discernment, humility and perspective — are not limited to romantic bonds. Their impact extends to various facets of life. However, when cultivated within the context of relationships, these traits hold the potential to wield significant positive influence over the dynamics, energy, and internal landscapes of partnerships.
The Power of Discernment
At the core of discernment lies the invaluable attribute of self-trust. When one develops discernment, they arrive at a place where they can trust their own judgment, even in circumstances characterised by nuance and complexity. Empowered with discernment, individuals can refrain from the compulsion to seek perfect answers from external sources.
Instead, they are equipped with the ability to exercise judgment and make decisions based on a multifaceted understanding of the situation. This involves a conscious effort to resist the allure of simplifying complex scenarios and to embrace nuance and multiple perspectives.
Furthermore, the skill of discernment is keenly intertwined with the recognition of personal agency. For those grappling with insecurities rooted in attachment patterns, nurturing discernment can lead to a significant reduction in impulsive reactions driven by fear and anxiety.
By learning to trust our judgment, we become less likely to be shackled by an apprehensive, binary mindset, and are more inclined towards curiosity, empathy, and a balanced approach towards our relationships.
The Role of Humility
Humility emerges as a crucial relationship superpower, particularly for individuals with anxious-leaning attachment patterns. The inherent tendency to assume an all-encompassing understanding of a partner's emotions and needs can be rooted in an arrogance that undermines the partner's agency and autonomy.
By exercising humility, we can refrain from assuming an authoritative stance over our partner's experiences and emotions, and can adopt a more receptive and open-minded approach. This embrace of humility fosters an environment where partners have the freedom to chart their own paths. It serves as a liberating force, dispelling the burden of responsibility for influencing and dictating the partner's emotions, actions, and decisions.
Nurturing a Perspective
In times of fear and insecurity, individuals often find themselves trapped in a cycle of hyper-focused attention on minor details, which subsequently leads to overblown, catastrophic interpretations. In developing the superpower of perspective, one can elevate their gaze beyond the micro-moments of conflict and disillusionment. By adopting a perspective-oriented approach, individuals can train themselves to resist catastrophizing minor disturbances and, instead, broaden their view to encompass the inherent imperfections and the ebbs and flows that characterise every relationship.
The adept management of perspective involves a conscious effort to recalibrate the narrative from an inherently negative bias to an understanding rooted in gratitude and contentment. This shift in focus serves as a counterbalance to the hyper-vigilant over-analysis of negative events, thereby creating space for recognising the value and positivity inherent in the relationship.
Integration of Relationship Superpowers
The integration of discernment, humility, and perspective as relationship superpowers presents a transformative opportunity for individuals navigating the often intricate and demanding terrain of emotional connections. By cultivating discernment, individuals can alleviate the grip of anxiety-driven reactions and foster a culture of transparency, empathy, and understanding within their relationships. The infusion of humility serves as a force for dispelling the tendency to assume control over a partner's emotions and experiences while embracing an open, receptive stance towards surprises and individual autonomy.
Moreover, the integration of perspective reorients the internal dialogue from a fear-driven narrative to one rooted in gratitude and acceptance of the imperfections inherent in every relationship. This collective integration of relationship superpowers sets the stage for a profound recalibration, allowing individuals to engage in their relationships with a renewed sense of resilience, harmony, and interconnectedness.
Conclusion
The trilogy of discernment, humility, and perspective, when embraced as relationship superpowers, serves as an indispensable compass for individuals seeking to navigate the unpredictable yet wondrous realm of human connection. While their impact extends beyond the confines of relationships, their cultivation within this sphere unfurls the potential for transformative growth, resilience, and harmony.
As we embrace the guiding ethos of discernment, humility, and perspective, the journey towards fostering healthy and thriving relationships becomes illuminated with the promise of self-confidence, empathy and profound interconnectedness.
Questions for Discussion & Reflection
How does your level of self-trust impact your ability to exercise discernment in your relationships? Have there been instances where your lack of self-trust has affected your judgment in a relationship?
Can you recall a time when you felt compelled to influence or control your partner's emotions, decisions, or actions? How did this impact your relationship? In what ways do you believe humility could have helped the situation?
Reflect on a recent conflict or disagreement in your relationship. How did your ability to keep things in perspective (or lack thereof) influence the outcome and your emotional well-being?
Have you ever found yourself magnifying a minor issue in your relationship, leading to catastrophic conclusions? How do you think cultivating more perspective could help in such situations?
Do you tend to fixate on finding the "perfect" decision in your relationships, fearing the consequences of making the "wrong" choice? How might practising discernment and humility alleviate this fear and shift your approach to decision-making?
Think about a time when your lack of humility impacted your relationship. How might staying humble have changed the dynamics of that situation?
Reflect on a recent relationship challenge - how might you have used discernment, humility, or perspective to approach the situation differently?
Do you feel that your fear or anxiety narrows your perspective in your relationships? How might expanding your perspective lead to healthier, more balanced interactions with your partner?
In what ways do you see the concepts of discernment, humility, and perspective intertwining to create a healthier relationship dynamic? Can you think of a situation where these powers worked together positively in your relationship?
Think about a time when you successfully exercised discernment, humility, or perspective in your relationship. How did it impact the outcome? What did you learn from that experience?
FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:
Save $150 on my Higher Love break-up course with the code PHOENIX
Follow me on Instagram: @stephanie__rigg & @onattachment
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:04]:
In today's episode, I'm going to be talking about three relationship superpowers. Now, as I say that, and as I was planning for this episode, I was thinking it could just as easily be three life superpowers because the things that I'm going to share with you today are not specific to relationships. But this being a podcast largely about relationships, I thought I'd frame it in that context because I think that the skills that I'm going to share with you today, these attributes that we can all and should all be seeking to develop within ourselves, are really, really powerful in that arena of relationships, in shifting how we show up the energy that we bring to the relationships and our internal relationship, which has really beautiful knock on effects in our broader relationship.
[00:01:24]:
So the things that I'm going to be sharing today are really I was on a Q-A call for healing anxious attachment earlier this week, and I was saying to the students, if I could wave a magic wand and bestow upon you one skill or a handful of skills, it would be these. Because I'm very much of the view that becoming self confident and really resilient in ourselves and in our relationships is about learning to stand an hour and 2ft. Which is why I'll often be reluctant to give people very specific, instructive advice on what to do in a particular situation, because it's almost that old saying of give a man a fish and feed him for a day or teach him how to fish and feed him for a lifetime. And so my approach with my clients and students is always to try and teach you how to fish. And that's kind of going to be the crux of what these three relationship superpowers get at that I'm going to share with you shortly. So that is what we're going to be talking about today. Before I dive into that, a very quick reminder that healing anxious attachment is still open for registration. I'm going to leave it open for another week or so for this round if you are wanting to join.
[00:02:45]:
Really great time to do it. I will probably run the course once more before I have a baby in May next year, but I'm not really sure what the format will be. It will probably be less interactive than the current round, just because I'm trying to manage my capacity and energy in the lead up to having a baby. So the current round has a live community. We had a live Q a call, as I said earlier this week, and we may well have another one. So it is a really great round to join. And if anyone has been interested in the programme, there may be limited opportunities between now and may next year. And then I'll be taking a bit of a break.
[00:03:22]:
So time is of the essence. And all of that is linked in the show notes and on my website, of course. Okay, so let's dive into this conversation around three relationship superpowers. So the first one that I want to share with you is the power of discernment. Now, I think discernment is really inextricably linked to self trust, and I think it builds self trust. And in turn, as we build self trust, we hone our power of discernment. Now, I think discernment, maybe it's hard to define. I think to me it's around judgement.
[00:03:59]:
Can I make a judgement call on a situation that is nuanced and messy, and trust in my ability to do that, rather than needing to find the perfect answer and oftentimes source that answer from something outside of myself. So as much as I love receiving questions from my community, and I do that each week on Instagram, I'll put out a question box and people ask me questions. And I love to guide people to hone their discernment through illustrating how I would approach an issue. And I think that that can be really useful, giving illustrative examples of that. At the same time, I'm always very reluctant or hesitant to stipulate to someone specifically what they should do in a situation. Right. You'll notice, if you do listen to me, giving people feedback or guidance on a situation that often, I will put it back to them and I'll ask them, what does it feel like to you? Or what is it that you're wanting? Or if someone asks me, does it matter that this is happening? Or should I be worried about that? And I'll often put it back on them and say, will you tell me? Right. Because as I alluded to in the introduction, I really don't want people to have reinforced an already existing tendency to rely on something outside of themselves to provide the answers for what is right for them, what is true for them, and what they need to do.
[00:05:26]:
Because I think the more we do that, the more we rely on that. And the less we trust ourselves, the less we trust our own judgement. Because it really is only in practising that that we start to go, oh, okay, I can wade into the messy waters of a complex situation and I can survey the landscape and I can consider all of the shades of grey that might exist here and I can come up with a good enough solution for me, which will probably be the best solution for me in any given moment. I think that so often our reluctance to exercise our own judgement and trust our own judgement is because we are attached to this idea of there being a perfect decision or a right decision, and that the right decision is one where we will get the outcome that we want or we won't have any regret, that we'll secure a certain course of events or trajectory that will follow from that decision. And I think that really is an illusion that is grounded in a need for control. And often it's only in hindsight we go, oh, that didn't pan out the ways that I was hoping. Therefore it was the wrong decision. Whereas I think the more emotionally mature and self trusting version of that is I made the best decision I could based on what I knew at the time.
[00:06:44]:
And that was still the right decision, even though it might not have played out the way that I had anticipated or hoped for. And so I think the ability to be discerning is all of that. It's being able to trust our judgement. It's taking in all of the facts of a situation rather than jumping to conclusions or acting impulsively. It's recognising the existence of nuance and multiple perspectives and perceptions of a situation, rather than being so attached to our own story that we can't actually see beyond it. It's almost like zooming out from a situation and doing like a 360 degree revolution of a situation and going, oh, okay. There's more here than what I initially realised. I think also when it comes to discernment, we're able to do that more readily and more confidently when we recognise that we have agency.
[00:07:43]:
I think that if you're someone who struggles to trust your own judgement, because maybe you've wound up in situations previously where you ignored your judgement and then you persisted in a dynamic that was unhealthy or that you didn't have a good feeling about, but for whatever reason you stayed in it or any number of other things, maybe you really thought something was great and it turned out not to be. And so that kind of chips away at your trust in your own judgement and discernment and while all of that makes a lot of sense, of course our experience in the past is going to inform how we feel in the present and how we approach the future. I think that the more we remind ourselves of our agency, of our power to choose in a moment to moment way, it kind of counteracts that fear story that says if you don't make the perfect decision, you are going to be trapped. And so when we have the discernment and go, yeah, okay, I'm going to make the best decision I can or I'm going to see this situation in a way that's murky and messy and nuanced. And I recognise that I can continue to fine tune that, to finesse that, to pivot as needed. I'm not locking myself into anything, I'm not going to be trapped, I'm not going to be powerless, because I think that is what our fear would have us believe. And of course that's really frightening if we think that making a decision is tantamount to locking ourselves into something that's potentially really not what we want. So hopefully it's clear, as I share some thoughts on discernment, why that's so powerful in a relationship.
[00:09:17]:
I think for most everyone who falls on the spectrum of insecure attachment, whether it's anxious leaning, avoidant leaning or some combination of the two, the ability to trust ourselves, to trust our judgement, to trust in our ability to be discerning, is underdeveloped or impaired much of the time. And so when we start to build that up, we're much less likely to react impulsively, to panic and let our fear grab the wheel and be in the driver's seat of our relationships. As so often happens, we're able to give our partner the benefit of the doubt in a way that we probably struggle to when we are stuck in a really either or blame driven mindset, or one that needs to figure out who the villain is, figure out who the bad guy is and proceed on that basis. When we can be discerning and we can slow down and get curious and then trust our own judgement and trust ourselves to behave in a way that is aligned and in integrity and grounded, then there's much less urgency to our relationships because it feels like we can act in a way that is honouring of us and them and the relationship itself, without needing to be inherently self protective or defensive or attacking or any of those other things. I think discernment really is hugely valuable, as I said, for ourselves and our own relationship and inner environment of self trust but also when it comes to our relationships and our capacity to see what is happening in our relationships with clarity and to trust in our ability to know what to do next. Okay, the second relationship superpower that I want to share with you is humility. So again, I think that I've probably spoken about this many times on the show, but one of the most valuable and the most challenging things that we can do in our relationships is stay humble. For those of us who are more anxious, leaning in our attachment patterns, there's a real tendency to think that we know everything that's going on in our partner and we know what they need and we know that better than they do.
[00:11:32]:
And I think that that flows from the fact that we spend so much time thinking about it, right? If we've done all of the ruminating and the wondering and the hypothesising and the strategizing, and we've read all the books and we've listened to all the podcasts and we've done all this stuff, we really feel like we've equipped ourselves with a lot of information. And when we combine that with our baseline level of sensitivity and attunement, our ability to read those cues and take in a lot of information about someone else's emotional state and feel very tapped into that, it's easy to think that we know their inner world and what they need to do better than they do, and that we know everything about them now, while we might know them really well. And that's a beautiful thing. I think there can be almost an arrogance to that assumption that we know what someone needs more than they do, and that it is our job, our responsibility. It's incumbent upon us to try and influence them in the direction of what we think is best for them, particularly when that runs counter to what they are articulating they need or want. And so it's really important to stay humble, to really sit in the recognition of the fact that you don't know everything, you are not all knowing, and that it actually costs you a lot to try and play the role of puppet master or master influencer in your relationships and taking responsibility for everyone else's emotions and choices and decisions and needs and wants. It's actually very liberating to sit in the humility of recognising. I actually don't know.
[00:13:23]:
I don't know what they're thinking or feeling beyond what they tell me. I can do all of the psychoanalysing that I want and say, oh, they're just doing this because they're scared of that, and you might be right, but you might be wrong. And I think the part of us that really wants to establish certainty and wants to feel a sense of control by having a clear picture of what's going on and what's true and make it all make sense in a way that makes us feel comfortable, can really take us away from that place of humility. And this is not easy to do. This is something that I absolutely have to keep an eye on within myself, particularly doing this work. As you can imagine, it's easy for me to get kind of arrogant and assume that I know my partner and other people in my life, that I know what's going on for them before they do, or at a level that they haven't quite grasped, and again, might be right, but it could very well be wrong. And it's actually much more freeing for me to not go into that realm of needing to figure it out on someone's behalf, of letting them walk their own path, of letting them be on their own trajectory and actually not meddling or interfering with that, as I said, to influence it in the direction of what I think is best or what would be most comfortable for me, which is ultimately quite a self serving agenda. So staying humble, staying curious, being open to being surprised by someone, rather than feeling like you need to have it all figured out and that you need to provide all of the solutions and all of the insights.
[00:15:00]:
Let your partner and let others in your life surprise you. Okay? And last but not least, the third relationship superpower that I want to share with you is perspective. So I think that when we are in fear, in insecurity, in anxiety, in stress, our field of vision narrows and we get very zoomed in on micro moments. It might be one small comment that your partner says, and all of a sudden you're doubting the future of the relationship. You're wondering if things are always going to be like this, and how could they do that? And does the fact that they said this or thought that, or behaved in that way mean that they don't love you, they don't care about you, they're actually not a good partner for you? We take something very little, and then we extrapolate it to really big, generalised, universal conclusions and projections that tend to be fear driven. Right? They tend to be catastrophic, they tend not to be. It's very rare that we're taking a micro moment and then extrapolating it to be something really beautiful and global. It's almost always a dark, negative spin on what's happening and I think that it's so important to.
[00:16:10]:
It kind of links back with discernment. And I had a question from someone in healing anxious attachment, asking how do I know when to let things go versus when to bring something up that I'm bothered by. And I think that is a question that cultivating that power of discernment will really help you with situations like that. Trusting your own judgement, but also keeping things in perspective. Because I think if you're talking about building a long term relationship with someone, a relationship that is notionally for life, or at least for the long term, then do you really want to be fixating on and dragging yourself through the mud on every single little thing that happens, every moment of temporary rupture or disconnection? Now, it's not to say that we want to create a relationship culture where we're routinely sweeping things under the rug that are building up and causing resentment and stress and disconnection kind of rumbling underneath the surface. But at the same time, I think, again, there can be some liberation and some spaciousness in keeping things in perspective and going okay, my partner and I were a bit irritable at each other this morning, and that's okay because we have a beautiful relationship and I don't have to. For me personally, it's been very relieving for me to adopt an approach of keeping things in perspective, of reminding myself if I get upset with Joel or something, he just bothers me. Reminding myself that I love this person and they are a good person and all of the things that are really great about our relationship, so that I don't go so easily into that doom spiral of, oh, this one thing that he does or did makes him a bad person, makes our relationship wrong, means that it's only going to get worse from here and I'm going to be trapped.
[00:18:02]:
All of that is so, it's such an easy, slippery slope to go down, and it inevitably, invariably makes you feel worse. So rather than doing that, can we keep it in perspective? Can we keep the moment or the little thing as the little thing that it is, rather than blowing it up into a big thing and just see what that feels like? Because I think the hyper vigilant part of us, the part that is always on the lookout for danger, is going to blow those things up and wave a really big red flag and go, you need to be on high alert for this thing, and you need to make sure it never happens again and go into all of your full protective force on putting out every single little spotfire that might come up. And again, it's about discernment, it's about balancing, because we don't want to be ignoring these things to the point where they really do build up. But I think that there's a lot of value in just letting things go. Not in a way where you are holding onto it internally, but actually letting go of it internally as well. And I think that doing that just means that we're able to almost correct the negative bias that will exist as a baseline for a lot of us, where we are trained to focus on what's wrong or what's missing or what's not enough and what we could use more of. And in choosing to let that go and keep things in perspective, we can sort of retrain ourselves to recognise all that is good and all that we are grateful for and all that we value in our relationship as it is, rather than always focusing on what's missing or what could be better. Because, as you will have heard me say so many times before, relationships are imperfect and there will be seasons of disconnection and there will be ebb and flow.
[00:19:47]:
And I think the more we can accept that and expect that and make our peace with that, then the less anxiety we're going to feel every time there's a bump in the road, every time something comes up and we go to that place of, this is very, very bad and needs to be solved urgently because it's threatening to everything. Can we trust a little more in the fabric of our relationship that we're building, in the foundations that we've created and know that it's okay? It's okay if we have an off day, week or even month in the context of our broader relationship and the thing that we're building, can I trust that we do have stronger foundations than that and come back to the love and the respect and the care that I know exists between us, rather than taking every little thing that happens as evidence for some very catastrophic story that I'm running in my head about how you're going to hurt me or how I'm going to be trapped in an unhappy relationship, or whatever other worst case scenario I've convinced myself of, that I'm subconsciously scanning for evidence of all the time. So keeping things in perspective and letting things go is a very, very liberating practise and one that will pay huge dividends in the overall energy and tone of your relationship and allow you to recalibrate to something that is less focused on the negative and creates, I think, more space and more capacity for you to see all of the value and the richness and the positivity and the goodness that is there in your relationship. So, gosh, I'm out of breath. I am almost five months pregnant. And I tell you what, it's getting harder and harder to record these podcasts without gasping for air all the time. So if you can hear me panting, that is why I hope that this has been helpful. I hope that that's given you something to reflect on these relationship superpowers, life superpowers, if we want to call them that, and given you some food for thought on maybe where you've got room to grow on these.
[00:21:51]:
Maybe where the absence or the underdevelopment of these traits, whether in you or your partner or others in your life, is maybe impacting the relationship and what steps you might start taking in the direction of cultivating more discernment, more humility, and more perspective in yourself and in your relationship. So I really hope that that's been helpful, and I look forward to seeing you again next week. Thanks, guys. Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you want to go deeper on all things attachment, love and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com and if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a five star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here, and I hope to see you again sooner.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
attachment, relationships, relationship coach, guidance, knowledge, practical tools, insecurity, healthy, thriving, self-confidence, resilience, self-trust, discernment, judgement, nuanced, messy, internal relationship, anxious attachment, interactive, community, humility, arrogance, perspective, fear, stress, hyper vigilant, imperfect relationships, ebb and flow, negative bias, love, respect, pregnancy