#48 5 Questions to Assess the Emotional Health of Your Relationship
In this episode, we're talking all about emotional health & safety in relationships. We'll be discussing some guiding principles and questions you can ask to assess how emotionally healthy your relationship is, and most importantly, what you can do to improve the emotional safety of your relationship.
In this episode, we're talking all about emotional health & safety in relationships.
If you've ever wondered what "emotional safety" actually means, look no further - we'll be discussing some guiding principles and questions you can ask to assess how emotionally healthy your relationship is. And most importantly, what you can do to improve the emotional state of your relationship - because let's face it, this is going to be a work in progress for most of us.
WHAT WE COVER:
the importance of feeling safe to voice needs, concerns & boundaries
why we should aim to navigate life's challenges as a team
the ability to safely & effectively repair after conflict
why we should be feeling loved, cared for & respected (most of the time!)
how your nervous system can give you insight into your relationship's emotional health
FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:
Follow me on Instagram: @stephanie__rigg & @onattachment
You might also like…
Episode Transcript
0:00:28.33 → 0:01:03.33
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, I'm going to be sharing with you five questions to ask to assess the emotional health of your relationship. So this is going to be diving into some of the hallmarks of emotional safety, emotional wellbeing, and we could say emotional green flags. Insofar as your connection with your partner is concerned, I think a really important thing to foreground at the outset is, first, that this topic is not intended for people who are in abusive situations or unsafe situations.
0:01:03.43 → 0:01:44.71
If that is the situation you're in, I really encourage you to seek support. That's not something that I can speak to in a podcast episode. It's not the scope of my work. So please take good care of yourself and be discerning. If that's you outside of that situation, please know that if you fall on what we might call the wrong side of the line in terms of the questions that I'm going to pose to you today meaning that you feel like you have a lot of room for improvement on the emotional health front, know that that doesn't mean that you are doomed, that your relationship is terminal, that you are in a toxic dynamic.
0:01:44.76 → 0:03:47.56
Any of those things that might feel stressful to realize, I would encourage you instead to take it as room for improvement, areas for growth, things to focus on, cultivating. Because the unfortunate reality is many of us, dare I say most of us without the knowledge and the tools will have had experiences with these less than perfect emotional safety kind of situations as we'll get into shortly. So those are just some caveats at the outset.
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The first question is, do you feel safe and able to express how you're feeling to set a boundary to voice a need, or to give someone feedback without worrying that it's going to blow up or spiral into a fight, or that there will be some other adverse consequence? For example, that the relationship is going to end, that they're going to say they're going to leave, that they're going to say, oh, it's too much, let's not bother. Do you have a level of safety in bringing to your partner whatever it is that you're feeling or needing without having that fear of adverse consequence? So this is obviously really important to the emotional health of a relationship to be able to have that container of whatever is within me - of course, we don't need to give our partner the raw, unfiltered, high charge version of that - but being able to take what we're thinking and feeling to our partner to the extent that there's a conversation that needs to be had, I think this is really foundational.
0:04:50.85 → 0:05:50.46
Because in the absence of this, if we don't have that safety, then what happens? We tend to internalize that, suppress it, get increasingly frustrated, resentful, hurt, lonely, and then usually it comes out sooner or later, but it might look more like a volcanic eruption than a regulated conversation. So when we have that kind of dynamic, it really erodes the emotional health of the relationship and the sense of trust and safety. There something I should say on this one is that sometimes that's anxiety driven on one side. So for anxiously attached people, for example, they may very much struggle to voice those things, not because it actually would blow up into a fight or that their partner would leave them, but there is so much fear and anxiety around being too much, around being a burden, around pushing people away.
0:05:51.25 → 0:06:56.02
A lot of that is kind of mindset stuff and wounding around those stories that it prevents them from ever trying, from ever actually putting that out there, from sort of a hypothetical worst case scenario or fear. So I think it's important, and this probably goes for all of the questions we'll be talking about to ask is this a real thing relationally, or is this predominantly or at least partly my own individual work to do, and it's probably going to be a combination of both. So irrespective of where it's coming from, if you don't feel like you can bring things to the relationship because you think there's going to be some sort of adverse consequence associated with that, that is really going to impede your emotional safety in connection with one another. Okay. The next question is, do you trust that when life gets challenging, you'll be able to tackle those challenges as a team?
0:06:56.63 → 0:07:44.58
Or do things that are hard tend to divide you and turn you into enemies or competitors? So the kinds of things that I'm thinking in this question might be one of you loses your job unexpectedly or you get a challenging health diagnosis, or you have to juggle caring for kids or aging parents or anything like that just the vicissitudes of life. The things that do get in the way, that do make life more stressful and unpredictable, do those things tend to unite or divide you? If they unite you and turn you into a team, brilliant. That's a really good sign for your emotional health, safety and connection in your relationship.
0:07:45.27 → 0:08:59.83
If those things tend to divide you, then that's probably a good sign that when you do get stressed, your tendency is to feel again, if we're going to talk about this through an attachment lens, on the anxious side, you probably feel emotionally abandoned in those moments like you're not getting enough support from your partner. And on the avoidance side, you probably have stories around when things get hard, my impulse, my instinct is to go it alone because that is what I know at my very core, that when things get hard, I turn a bit insular and I just try and tackle that on my own. So if that is your tendency overall in the relationship, that rather than coming together when things get hard, you tend to be divided and sort of in your own lanes, that's something to be aware of and maybe talk about saying, hey, I noticed that when things get hard, it really impacts our connectedness and our sense of collaboration in our relationship. Would you be open to working on that? What are some ways that we could be more supportive of one another when things get hard rather than siloing ourselves and then feeling really alone?
0:09:03.84 → 0:09:37.96
Because I think that that can be a really disconnected experience. Okay. The next question I want to offer you is when you have conflict, as all couples will, if you never have conflict, I would say that is more concerning to me than if you fight regularly, are you able? To safely repair? Or do you tend to have a big fight and then run out of steam and then have some sort of half assed Band Aid apology, sweep it under the rug and then kick it down the road until you have the same fight again?
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This is a really good example of most, maybe not most, a lot of couples do this. So if that's you don't panic, don't feel, oh my God, my relationship is terrible. What am I going to do? Should I break up with my partner? No, we can learn these things.
0:09:53.95 → 0:10:23.35
This is skill based, but it is really important and it's an important skill to learn if you want to have a healthy, secure, lasting relationship. So what does safe repair look like? I could do a whole podcast episode on that, and I probably should, but it's things like, oh, okay, can we hear each other in conflict? Can we engage with what the other person is saying? Can we validate their perspective even when their experience of the situation is different to ours?
0:10:23.45 → 0:11:11.87
Can we negotiate and find a healthy middle ground that acknowledges and respects both of our perspectives and our needs? In this situation, are we able to substantively engage with the underlying issues that might have triggered a surface level rupture? So these sorts of conversations, are we able to actually stay in the discomfort of rupture and repair? Or do we just tend to have these big explosive fights and then we kind of run out of steam and don't do anything to actually solve or at least address the underlying concerns? Because I think, as I said, if we don't do that, we will continue to have the same fights.
0:11:11.95 → 0:11:24.77
They might be triggered by different things. So one time it might be, oh, you're home late from work. And the next time it might be, oh, you didn't do the washing up or whatever. Right. It might be the most mundane things and they might be different every time.
0:11:24.89 → 0:12:00.27
But the underlying emotional complaint will be the same until you engage with and address that emotional complaint and it's accompanying need. Okay, so the next question is on the whole, and that's an important introductory qualifier to this question, do you feel loved, cared for, respected, and listened to in the relationship? So this is really a foundational right to secure relationships. We all want to feel loved, seen, understood. I could add those in there cared for, respected, listened to.
0:12:00.47 → 0:12:35.77
That is really at the heart of healthy relationships, of secure relationships. The reason that on the whole is important is that you aren't going to feel all of those things in every moment of every day actively from your partner. But when we can zoom out and go, what is the overall feeling tone of this relationship? Do I feel loved and cared for? Do I trust that my partner loves me, cares for me, respects me, and will listen to me, sees me, understands me?
0:12:35.89 → 0:13:24.99
Those really are such foundational needs as humans that I think having that overall impression of your partner and your connection with them in the relationship is important. I think when we don't feel all of those things on balance again overall, then that's a sign that we either have some real work to do around that going, okay, what would I need to feel loved, cared for, respected, understood? What are the things that are preventing me from feeling that? And how can we take really actionable steps towards me feeling that? And if you're not feeling that, there's a good chance your partner is not feeling that either.
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Because these things, I think oftentimes when we're not feeling any of those things, we might be withholding that from our partner, from a place of self protection. So getting really honest with ourselves and this is probably a harder question to be honest about, depending on where you fall. And then if we are committed to the relationship and we do really want to work on the relationship, taking this one pretty seriously because I think it's going to be hard to sustain a relationship in which you don't, generally speaking, feel loved, cared for, understood, respected, listened to, et cetera. Okay, last but not least, how does your nervous system feel in their company? You know, I love looking at and working with the nervous system and weaving that into an understanding of our emotional experience.
0:14:15.57 → 0:15:17.76
So I think that when our nervous system feels at ease, feels safe, feels regulated in their company, that they are a natural co regulator for us, meaning that our systems sort of soothe each other and are a signal of safety to one another. That's a really good sign because our nervous system, our autonomic nervous system is subcortical, meaning it sits below our thinking brain, our prefrontal cortex. And so underneath all of the analysis and all of the thinking and overthinking and ruminating that we can do, there is this fundamental question of how does my nervous system perceive this person? Now, again, some of this will be historical. Meaning if you have had difficult relationships in the past, if you have trauma, then there might be a lot of projection going on there.
0:15:17.81 → 0:16:10.90
You might feel relationships broadly are unsafe, and therefore your nervous system registers your partner as threatening or unsafe, even if that is not in fact the case. So the fact that your nervous system perceives your partner is threatening and you feel anxious or shut down in their company, that's not necessarily a sign that your partner is in fact dangerous. But I think it's a really good sign in terms of the emotional health of the relationship. If your nervous system feels at ease in their company and if it doesn't, again, it's not terminal. There's absolutely things that you can do both individually and relationally to work on that, to provide more evidence of safety so that your nervous system can settle and that you can reap the rewards of that beautiful nourishing co regulation that we all need.
0:16:11.59 → 0:16:33.64
Okay, so that was five questions to assess the emotional health of your relationship. I hope that that's been helpful. I'll just quickly recap those. The first one was do you feel safe in expressing how you're feeling, setting a boundary voicing needs, and giving feedback without worrying that it will blow up into a fight? Do you trust that when life gets challenging and throws unexpected things your way, you'll be able to tackle that as a team?
0:16:33.69 →0:17:00.83
Or do those things usually divide you and turn you into enemies or competitors? When conflict does occur, are you able to safely repair or do you usually sweep things under the rug and put a bandaid on them until the next time you have the same fight? On the whole, do you feel loved, cared for, respected, and listened to in the relationship? And does your nervous system feel at ease in their company? Okay, guys, I really hope that this has been helpful for you.
0:17:00.87 → 0:18:06.82
As I said, don't despair if you feel like you've got some work to do based on those guiding questions. This is kind of the whole point of this work, right? That a lot of us do have work to do there, and it is ongoing work, but it is really fruitful, worthwhile, rewarding work, and it is within reach for all of us if we're willing to put in the time and effort to make it so.
#44 5 Reasons You Might Struggle to Apologise
In this episode, we're talking all about apologies - and specifically, why they might feel so hard sometimes. Being able to apologise is so fundamental to healthy repair, but for many of us, can feel inexplicably challenging. After listening to today's episode, my hope is that you'll have greater clarity around why apologies can feel so hard, and how to address the underlying resistance so you can foster greater connection and emotional maturity in your relationships.
In this episode, we're talking all about apologies - and specifically, why they might feel so hard sometimes.
Being able to apologise is so fundamental to healthy repair, but for many of us, can feel inexplicably challenging. After listening to today's episode, my hope is that you'll have greater clarity around why apologies can feel so hard, and how to address the underlying resistance so you can foster greater connection and emotional maturity in your relationships.
WHAT WE COVER:
why apologies can feel so hard
what to do when we feel unseen and misunderstood
the difference between intent and impact
how people-pleasing & perfectionism can hold us back from taking responsibility
FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:
You might also like…
Episode Transcript
0:00:27.61 → 0:00:59.13
Hey, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of On Attachment. In today's episode, I'm going to be sharing with you five reasons why you might struggle apologising. I think that this is a really important conversation to have and a really important area of our relational patterns to bring more conscious awareness, too, because I know for a lot of people, myself included, that apologising can feel really hard sometimes. We can have a lot of resistance, a lot of reluctance, and it's something that's really interesting to reflect on.
0:00:59.25 → 0:01:29.07
What stories am I telling myself? What is preventing me from saying sorry, from taking responsibility, from apologising to someone who I may have heard or who may be upset with me? What's holding me back from doing that? What resistance am I experiencing and why? I think this is so important to have awareness around, because being able to safely repair after a disagreement, after conflict, is so fundamental to building healthy, secure relationships.
0:01:29.17 → 0:02:25.88
And this really applies irrespective of whether we're talking romantic relationships, friendships, colleagues, family, being able to have these conversations, these repair conversations in a mature, healthy way is really fundamental. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. Some of the reasons why that might feel hard, just so we can bring a little more conscious awareness to it and go to those conversations and be in those moments with a bit more self awareness, so that we're not just acting from fear, from woundedness, from defensiveness, which I think is a big thing when it comes to apologising. Before we dive into that, couple of quick announcements. The first being that I have created a new Instagram account for the podcast specifically, so if you look up On Attachment on Instagram, you can follow along.
0:02:25.93 → 0:02:53.81
I'm going to be sharing exclusive podcast content, so clips from the show and other podcast related things. So if you love the show, that would be a really great way for you to support me and also for you to get more content from the podcast via Instagram. So if you look up On Attachment, you'll be able to find it there. The second quick announcement is just to share the review of the week. I have to say, you guys have been leaving so many beautiful reviews.
0:02:54.39 → 0:03:15.86
I was really spoiled for choice when I was picking one out to read today, but today's one is finally someone that understands me. I stumbled across this podcast while searching for something else and man, did the stars align. Finally, I found someone who explains things in a way I can understand. Like, she's talking to me about me and she's half a world away. If you're looking to understand attachment.
0:03:15.92 → 0:03:32.12
This is a podcast for you. Thank you so much for that beautiful review. I really do appreciate it. And as I said, there are so many lovely reviews that have gone up in the past couple of weeks. I am so grateful and really very humbled to be helping so many of you with the podcast.
0:03:32.18 → 0:04:05.28
So even if I haven't read your review out, please know I have read it. I read every single one and I'm deeply appreciative. If that was your review that I just read out, please send an email to podcast@stephanierigg.com and my team will set you up with free access to one of my master classes as a way to say thank you. Okay, so with all of that out of the way, let's dive into five reasons why you might struggle apologising. I'm going to start with the more obvious and simple ones and then dig into some that are a little less obvious and where there's a little bit more to unpack.
0:04:05.39 → 0:04:56.79
So the first reason that you may struggle to apologise is that you feel misunderstood or like you haven't been heard. You feel like there's a deeper issue and you don't want to let go of the conversation, the opportunity to discuss what's going on. You feel like the conversation is unfinished because you haven't been heard, validated, understood. And so to apologise, to say, yes, I'm sorry, you might have some fear that that's going to herald the end of discussion and you're not ready for the discussion to end because you don't feel like you've had sufficient space and airtime to share what you're feeling and your perspective on the situation. So I think that for a lot of us, when we don't feel heard, we want to keep the conversation going.
0:04:56.83 → 0:05:27.54
And there's a broader point here. If you are someone who in conflict, tends to not want to wrap up, and this is probably more for my anxious people, a common complaint from avoided partners is, oh, you just want to keep talking and talking and talking about it. You never just let it go. And that usually signals that you do not feel like you have been understood or heard. And so you just want to keep dragging it out, or you want to keep raising new issues or reopening issues that you've already talked about.
0:05:27.67 → 0:06:06.06
You don't feel like there's a resolution. And so if you notice yourself struggling to apologise, struggling to get to the resolution and kind of wrap up the conversation that you're having, then it may be that you don't feel like you've been heard or understood. So reflect on that. And if that is the case, if you feel like you haven't been heard or understood, what would you need in order to feel heard or understood? And maybe that's saying to someone, I feel resistant to apologising or I feel reluctant to apologise because I'm not sure you're really understanding what I'm saying.
0:06:06.24 → 0:06:42.79
And asking whatever it is that you need in order to feel understood. Okay? The next reason that you might struggle with apologising is that you are focusing on intention rather than impact, meaning you're focusing on what you meant or what you intended or didn't intend, rather than the impact that your words, actions, omissions had on the other person. So I think this is a really big one and one that a lot of us, most of us are probably guilty of. It's like, no, but I didn't mean that.
0:06:42.91 → 0:07:23.45
Therefore I'm not going to apologise for it because it wasn't my intention, I didn't mean to upset you, I didn't mean to disappoint you, I didn't mean to frustrate you. Therefore, even if it had that impact, why should I have to apologise for it? Okay? And while this is very it can be really frustrating when you're in that experience and you feel like someone has taken an innocent intention and is then sending it back at you and telling you that you hurt them. Or you upset them or they're angry with you and you can kind of feel like your behaviour has been hijacked or taken out of your hands and turned into something that you never intended.
0:07:23.79 → 0:07:56.45
Healthy, mature relationships require that we can separate ourselves from that a little and be mature enough to go, wow, that wasn't my intention, but I'm really, really sorry that it had that impact. Right? Because as soon as you start arguing with them on that, you are denying what their experience was and it's very invalidating to the other person's experience when you say, I didn't mean it, therefore your experience of it or your emotional response is invalid. And I'm not going to apologise that I shouldn't have to. Okay?
0:07:56.60 → 0:08:21.25
So I think as hard as this one can be, if you can hold both, I didn't mean it. And it had that impact anyway, and I'm going to take you at your word on that and I'm going to apologise, because I obviously didn't want for it to have that impact, and I'm sorry that it did, rather than I didn't want it to have that impact. Therefore, that impact doesn't exist. And it's all in your head. Right, or I shouldn't have to apologise for it because that's a you problem.
0:08:21.42 → 0:08:48.17
I think that healthy relationships require that we care about how our behaviour impacts someone else. Even if that wasn't our intention. And frankly, especially if that wasn't our intention. Because we need to have more awareness around things that might be inadvertently causing tension or rupture in our relationship when that wasn't our intention, so that next time we can have more awareness around it and hopefully do something differently. Okay?
0:08:48.31 → 0:09:39.99
So that one is we want to validate and apologise for the impact, even if especially if that wasn't our intention. And that doesn't mean to apologise for the impact doesn't change the intention, so it doesn't mean that you are acknowledging or owning up to ill intent. Okay, the next reason that you might struggle apologising is this is one that I really used to struggle with in a previous relationship. You feel that the other person has more to apologise for, so it feels unfair for you to be the one apologising, even if the issue at hand might warrant an apology from you. You might feel that there's an overall imbalance and so there's this sentiment of you want me to apologise when you do Abcde and F things and you never apologise.
0:09:40.41 → 0:10:28.72
So if you notice that kind of response coming up and as I said, I can really relate to this one. In a previous relationship, when my partner would say, raise something that he was unhappy with, that I had done, and I had such a long shopping list of things that frustrated me, angered me, unmet needs, all of those things. And so I would get really righteous and indignant when he would expect me to apologise for anything. Even if, as I said, an apology was warranted on my part, I would use that as an opportunity to come back at him with this barrage of all of the things that he did continuously that I thought were far more worthy of apology and that hadn't been adequately addressed. So that might be a factor.
0:10:28.86 → 0:11:16.55
If you notice this big resistance and this kind of righteous, indignant thing of you want me to apologise, I think we need to look at that and go, okay, what's really going on here? I think in terms of what we do with that, if we've made a mistake, if we've hurt someone, if we've slipped up, then being responsible means owning that. And I think that we don't want to start point scoring and being competitive about who's more bad. When you notice yourself going to that kind of pattern in your relationship, that is the problem. The fact that you're in that mindset of competitiveness and point scoring, that's really the issue, not whatever the substantive issue is in the moment that's raised the discussion.
0:11:16.89 → 0:12:15.16
So I think that you need to recognise that if that's the pattern, and find a way to talk about all of the other things that you're harbouring resentment around so that you can address the underlying issue and not get stuck in this point scoring, angry, bitter kind of energy in your relationship. Because it really just locks connection and really impede your ability to repair and move forward on anything. Okay, the next reason that you might find it hard to apologise is that you might find it hard to validate and affirm that someone could have a good reason to be upset with you. So this one, I think, is for my people, pleasers. And I think if you are someone who really notices a people pleasing streak and that you try very hard to keep everybody happy, this is probably more an anxious attachment thing.
0:12:15.85 → 0:13:03.37
If you're constantly working in overdrive to keep everyone happy, to please everyone and to meet everyone else's needs, to keep everything peaceful and stable and someone's upset with you, then it can feel like this really personal failure. And so if that's where you're coming from, then it might feel safer to try and persuade them of why they're mistaken, why they're wrong, why they don't have valid reason to be upset with you, rather than owning that you were imperfect. Right. I think another way that I could frame this one is you really try to be perfect in your relationships. You rely on being perfect and you don't know how to hold the ebbs and flow of relationships.
0:13:03.55 → 0:14:01.40
So you can't actually tolerate the idea that someone could be validly upset with you and still love you. And so rather than owning that and recognising it and validating it and coming up with a solution, you become quite defensive and you go into overdrive trying to restore your image in their eyes rather than engaging with the legitimacy of their concern. The final reason that you might struggle with apologising, and this is sort of an umbrella one, is that you may just never have had safe experiences with rupture and repair. So if you grew up in a family system where there was no conflict or everything was like a cold war, nothing ever got talked about, everything was always swept under the rug. And you may have never seen apologies, you may have never given them, you may have never been on the receiving end of them, you may have never had them modelled for you.
0:14:01.53 → 0:14:50.43
On the contrary, you might have had a very high conflict environment. But then when everything was over, the dust settled and there was no actual substantive repair, it just kind of fizzled out and went back to business as usual. There's lots of different ways that this can show up, but I think for a lot of people, they haven't had positive modelling around what it means to have relational ruptures and then safely repair and come back together stronger. So I think if you have a lot of fear around conflict for that reason, then you don't really trust that that's all part of the process of healthy relationships. And so you're just in a fear state anytime you're in any sort of conflict, because you just don't trust that that can happen safely.
0:14:50.53 → 0:15:54.21
And when we're in a fear state, our ability to connect empathically and apologise is really impeded because we're automatically going to be in a threatened state and defensiveness and counterattack comes very naturally when we're in that state. So if we don't have an embodied experience of safe connection through rupture and repair, then we just might not trust in the safety of the overall experience and we might be very guarded and defensive when we're having those conversations as a result. Okay, so that was five reasons why you might struggle with Apologising in your relationships. I hope that that has given you some food for thought, given you something to reflect on, and maybe will allow you to approach Apologising and the repair conversation with a little more self awareness and emotional maturity the next time you find yourself in that situation. If you enjoyed this episode, as always, I'd be super appreciative.
0:15:54.26 → 0:16:09.79
If you could leave a five star rating, leave a review. If you're on Apple podcasts or elsewhere, we are able to leave a review. It really does help so much in getting the word out and I appreciate it so much. I really do appreciate your support. Thanks so much for joining me, guys.
0:16:09.83 → 0:16:12.10
I will see you again later this week.
0:16:14.47 → 0:16:36.50
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 on a five star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here and I hope to see you again soon.