Why now is the is the very best time to focus on relationships

Oct 13

I’ve been a bit frozen over the last 2 weeks – watching the global pandemic play out…

And it’s close to home - a friend who has Covid-19 is in a medically induced coma because his pneumonia is so bad.

I have a 13 year daily meditation and spiritual practice and still I was taken aback by my own reactions; the denial, fear, checking out, hypnotic obsession, overwhelm and inability to think clearly.

I’ve really had to pay extra attention to settling my nervous system and having self-compassion for how quickly I can descend into deeply unspiritual fear LOL.

And then there was this cascade of different thoughts about my coaching offerings,
I kept thinking that posting about relationship dynamics and finding love at this time was… well… a bit discourteous or flippant or silly.

I felt I had to address the elephant in the room but didn’t really know what to say about it… (others are more sure/erudite/clear... etc. etc).

Then I decided to write this post about all the thoughts and feelings I was having because I figured there would be someone out there who could relate.

Also, I was approached by a couple of potential clients and had calls with them, and it totally helped me remember that whatever is going on in the world people still really want to find and experience love.

And that actually my lens is still important right now, because corona has brought up all sorts of relational issues for many of us… including me!

It’s an opportunity to go deeper into self-honouring, to really tune into our needs and wants (which is actually what self-care is), AND THEN to be honest with ourselves and others about them - even when (we suspect) it may not go down well.

This is an essential practice for US to have a healthy relationship with US let alone other people.

To see where we have difficulties with setting functional boundaries – again this starts with ourselves - we need to be able to trust that we will abide by our own choices and what feels good for us despite what anyone else might say about it.

If we can’t do that then we can’t self-protect and we’re at grave risk of descending into victim consciousness.

It’s fundamental for us, as adults, to have ourselves as our number 1 priority and that rather than being selfish, this actually allows more capacity for us to give to others.

It’s even more important right now to know how to settle our own nervous systems out of flight or flight (sympathetic nervous system) and into rest and digest (parasympathetic nervous system).

I am passionate about this because the number 1 cause of dis-ease and a weakened immune system is ‘stress’ which is really another word for living in fight or flight.

We aren’t designed to live in ‘stress’ and our bodies WILL break down if we don’t learn how to manage those systems well ourselves.

As I said I have years of practice and STILL found it hard over the last 2 weeks to bring myself back in to rest and digest.

As for relationships with others, now more than ever, because we are facing periods of quarantine in close quarters - the way we show up in relationships is being uncomfortably magnified. IMHO this is a super powerful time to commit to healing our relational patterning, so that the ways in which we relate to ourselves and each other are as healthy and loving as possible.

This means investigating our ‘childhood hero’s, the defence mechanisms that we developed as innocent children to keep ourselves safe but which now, as adults are holding us back from experiencing deep connection (defences such as self-pity, people pleasing, not speaking our truth, playing small so others can shine - to name but a few).

It means taking powerful self-responsibility and owning our part in all our past experiences and our co-creation of them…. And then having wiliness to forgive ourselves and others.

It means being mindful and aware of the harmful narratives that we repeat over and over to ourselves and doing the work to replace them with healthy, loving ones.

It means listening, deep listening to our bodies and what they are asking of us.

It means paying attention to where and how we numb our feelings out and then being conscious around shifting our habits to process feelings in ways that have increasing returns for our health and well-being, (i.e. reaching for the yoga mat rather than the bottle).

I could go on, but you get the picture ;-)