Make It Stop!

When your marriage is struggling, I know from personal experience that the emotional pain is suffocating agony – like being stuck in a hot car with the windows up: brutal and unbearable and you crave fresh air!

So you go to a therapist, maybe, or a relationship coach, or some kind of healer: “make it stop, please!”

You need a breakthrough, asap.

But of course – you can’t get “fast results” when you are dealing with deep-rooted psycho-emotional issues, can you?

Well, actually…if the energy of the therapy is right…

It’s pretty common at even the first session to get a powerful healing release of negative emotions:

The tension breaks, the walls come down, the love flows again, and you find yourselves hugging and crying with relief, breathing together once more…

 

And although there is hard work still to be done, for sure, you feel connected again, and hopeful for the future…

That is the experience that I have always strived for in my sessions since I first opened my practice back in 2015 – and I am glad to affirm that it happens often –

Through the years, I have found that the fastest, and the deepest, path to healing is an approach that which I would describe as a combination of the scientific and the spiritual –

 

So what does that even mean?

I’ll explain it right now –

Because this is the guidance that I wish someone had ever had the insight and clarity to provide me through the years: simple and direct and actionable.

Just remember, results require effort –

And this particular effort leads to love and ease –

That’s something I know from personal experience as well.

Let’s start with:

The Science of Conflict

The basic question behind all couples work is:

Why are you in conflict with your partner when all you both want is to love and enjoy each other without drama?

It should be easy and effortless – but there’s something in the way, right?

Let’s look at this together:

If you lose “the story” – by which I mean, you see behind the details of whatever you are clashing about – it should be clear that you are treating each other either defensively or reactively –

This is because you each perceive each other as an opponent – yes?

To which you reply:

Of course I do – they dismiss or disrespect me, they ignore me, they emotionally abandon me, they attack or pressure me, they misunderstand me – if they would relate to me with warmth and love instead, then everything would be fine!

OK: let’s say for the moment that all of that is true – the first thing I need to point out is that: I can guarantee you that your partner feels exactly the same way towards you –

Which does not make you “wrong”, nor does it invalidate *any* of your pain!

But their feelings have to matter too, right?

Even if you can’t understand how they could possibly feel like a victim when clearly they are “to blame!”

This is one of the hardest “feelings” for partners to get over – this gut sense (shared by each) that if they acknowledge that their partner is hurting too, they are somehow surrendering their own right to be heard and validated.

That is simply not how real marriage work is done – both of your feelings must be worked through to complete resolution, with care and patience and support…

And so: you and your partner are each treating each other like an “opponent” –

Let’s explore that from a scientific perspective :

For human beings – for any organism – “opponent” equals “threat to survival”

So when you and your partner are in conflict, a “secondary” biological circuitry is activated within both of you:

It’s called your sympathetic nervous system, and it is more commonly referred to as your fight/flight/freeze biological circuitry.

Its original purpose is to protect us from physical danger: we must fight or flee or freeze to survive a physical threat.

These are all psychoemotional triggers:

-rejection

-emotional abandonment

-being mistreated

-being misunderstood in a negative way

– being unloved in any of the myriad forms that may take –

This is just a partial list…

Many times, the reasons you or your partner are so sensitive to these dynamics are because of unresolved emotional traumas within yourselves…

But all of these complex dynamics register in your psyche just like a physical threat: as “unsafe” –

And a relationship is based upon mutual emotional safety.

So when these dynamics are active, your primal survival circuitry kicks in, and actually distorts your thoughts –

And takes command of your actions…

So that you are relating to each other as a “danger” rather than a “loved one.”

This is true whether you are actually fighting – yelling, screaming, acting out – or (more commonly) being unkind in a more subtle low-key way: passive-aggressive is still “aggressive.”

Once this circuitry is provoked, you are literally incapable of communicating with the consciousness necessary to collaborate in a healing way with each other – to problem-solve with love and care.

While the whole time, you both know deep within that your partner is not an “enemy”…

And you long for a solution to break through.

 

The scientific solution

The solution is simple – not easy, but simple:

1.Recognize that both you and your partner want the same thing: to love and be loved, to feel only ease and joy with each other

2.Recognize that the source of the conflict is that you experience each other as a threat on a nervous system level that distorts your thoughts and feelings.

3.Shift your nervous system responses so that, when you are faced with the very same circumstances which now automatically trigger your fight-or-flight circuitry instead trigger a healthy, fulfilling and loving collaboration.

In other words, your thoughts and feelings are no longer distorted by negative emotions –

Instead, you and your partner are permanently “programmed” to relate to each other as teammates who face every challenge as an opportunity to problem-solve together with love and care.

 

The specific skills necessary to do this are:

1.The ability to connect lovingly with your partner’s heart in a way that feels internally strong and safe no matter what the topic or situation

2.The ability to communicate with a presence that only creates positive and constructive outcomes – including the specific words to say.

3.The ability to completely override your fight-flight-freeze response, and replace it with authentic feelings of calm, care and communion no matter what the external circumstances -so that you can guide the situation to an easy, loving resolution.

If you can change your nervous system responses, the very same situations which now cause you to feel threatened will actually do nothing more than cause you to communicate lovingly with each other – and thus deepen your loving bond, continuously, as you journey through life together.

There are an abundance of specific, step-by-step techniques to realize every one of these goals, that we support our couples with every day –

But the first step is to learn how to separate your emotional distress from “reality” – and then resolve to transform this automatic defensive response.

 

And now…Spirituality

The word “spirituality” means different things to different people:

For some it signifies God, the One…

Perhaps also their religion, their prayer, or figures such as Christ or Buddha or Muhammad…

For some it is their meditative practice…

For some it means their Yoga or Chi Gong or drum circle groups…

For some it means a general connection with the universe, or with realities and energies beyond the senses…

For some it means Love…

But to redirect this esoteric discussion for the moment to healing relationships:

There are actually many ways that we can and do work with spirit, energy, and absolutely religion, depending on each unique couple’s interests and needs…

But for the purposes of this blog, I’m going to focus on a single foundational – transformative – aspect of spirituality –

Which is that a fulfilling marriage is a natural state of being –

That comes about from the spiritual journey I am about to describe:

 

The Journey for All

I have studied with a variety of spiritual masters, and participated in many spiritual paths seeking Truth, personal growth, and higher consciousness.

The True paths all teach that human beings exist on this earth to realize their highest potential: a state of unconditional love which feels free, untroubled, empowered, light, and whole –

And that marriage, or relationship, is one of the best opportunities to create this state of consciousness, and support each other in achieving it.

To know ourselves as Love, and then share that with each other.

To always Put Love First.

This is not glib or simplistic – I am referring to Love not as an emotion, but as a state of being – the difference between these two forms of love is a topic in and of itself.

When you both commit to always putting Love First, you take back your power to create a life that is actually based in the highest spiritual principles: such as care and generosity and patience and mercy and gentleness – Love.

When this becomes the shared activity of your marriage, you find that you very quickly heal and resolve every issue between you.

To be clear: this is only for sincere couples who truly want to purge their lives of selfishness, immaturity, and toxicity  –

By which I mean, both partners must be motivated to change for the better.

 

The Spiritual Solution

I said that my approach is a fast one – so what is the “rapid” spiritual approach?

By realizing that every challenge you face is an opportunity to ask yourselves:

“How do we heal this with Love?”

“How do we resolve this with Love?”

“How do we Put Love First in this situation?”

In order to do this, you must:

-Learn how to “anchor” yourself in a state of clear peace, love and ease. This “remembering who you really are” is easier to achieve than you may think at this moment, if you are reading this because you are feeling emotionally challenged.

-Learn how to access and transmit the Love energy in a way that feels completely authentic.

-Learn how to use negative emotions, energies and tensions into qualities as “fertilizer” to become further established in shared states of love, peace and light.

(Guys if you’re still reading at this point I want you to know that I created the Relationship Remedy program just for you.  We have tools, techniques and exercises created with great sincerity and care to help both you and your partner evolve to your highest potential in these areas.)

 

The Fast Track to Healing Marriages

Relationship pain is unique because, unlike, say, a broken leg, there is an intuitive knowing that – if you can just find the magic words, energy, presence to meet the moment – that you can actually, in a second, magically shift the mood from anguish and distress into actual bliss –

Hugging, holding, warmth, tears of relief –

And that you can then build on that connection forever together, to become ever more peaceful and loving and complete with each other – like that intoxicating togetherness you shared at the beginning, but deeper, wiser, more authentic and mature.

We are created in Love.

Love is the Healer.

If we are creating a family, we want that family’s foundation to be this Love.

You want to heal your marriage issues as fast as possible?

Love is Right Now.

Wherever you are, I send you blessings of Peace.