How To Improve The Way We Relate: An Integral Relationship Model
We are relational beings, and the essence of our relationships is love Problems arise when we relate from fear or other disturbing emotions. Jealousy, pride or anger distance us from ourselves, hiding our relationships in dissatisfaction and isolation.
Observing our mind and its internal dynamics reveals the integrated mechanisms that we mobilize when relating. Exploring our interpersonal relationship, our experiences, will lead us to understand the relationship we establish with others and extensively with the different systems: family, educational, social, peer groups…
Immersing ourselves in our relational world is a process that needs time and large doses of love to observe, accept and heal it If we feel that something is not working well and we want to start a process of change, it is important to be willing to start with three steps:
Let’s see some keys to discover how we relate.
The relationship with oneself (intrapersonal)
We tend to put little awareness in ourselves and a lot in what the other person does or says The way we let ourselves be carried away by what runs through our mind, how we think our thoughts, how we live our emotions, what we deny, allow, boycott… all of this, reveals how we relate to each other
Often thoughts “think us”, “emotions live us”, “the mind chains us”, and so we go through “a life that lives us” instead of living it with fullness and openness. We are great strangers to ourselves and most of the time our worst enemies.
Mental dynamics have their roots in our first years of life. We incorporate beliefs, fears or commands that configure our bonding frame of reference. If we grew up in a safe and trustworthy system, we will experience relationships in an open and positive way. A hostile or uncertain environment will keep us on alert within a threatening and insecure world that will lead us to mistrust and minimize contact with others for fear of being hurt.
If we have decided to improve our relationships, we can broaden our vision and trust in the ability to transform them.
Richard Davidson, PhD in Neuropsychology, points out that “the basis of a healthy brain is kindness, and it can be trained.” As human beings we know that the only way in which we feel fully is love. This brings us closer to the certainty that only through benevolent love, as an inherent quality, will we be able to create antidotes to deactivate what hurts us and enhance the qualities that bring us closer to relating from the heart.
Self-demand, internal judgment, criticism, are mechanisms that distance us from the intrapersonal connection and in a co-emergent way from the others. Identifying when and how these internal tendencies arise will allow us to deactivate them and replace them with more friendly ones.
The relationship with our experience
Psychological and spiritual traditions provide us with different perspectives to facilitate encounter with our experiences in a more healing and loving way. If we have decided to change the way we relate, we will have to integrate our experiences in the best way possible As Aldous Huxley says, “Experience is not what happens to you, but what you do with what happens to you.”
Taking into account the way in which we relate to our experiences and their intensity, we can highlight three approaches and two different positions, as victims of circumstances or as apprentices of experience
Turning our experiences into mere stories with little emotional involvement
The observer mentally constructs his own story with all the learned mechanisms to avoid what is painful and inappropriate. As conceptual observers we live and experience, but we miss the profound transformation that can arise from intimate connection with our reality
By maintaining energy in the cognitive and behavioral areas, analyzing and reflecting, experiences will remain superficial and poor. As if a part of our life was slipping away in such a way that we did not allow it to “sink in” at a deep level. We can make it difficult for love to enter, object to what makes us feel good, or even reject any interesting life experience. This posture is conditioned by fear and will keep us away from situations that can be stimulating
Fear protects us from what we don’t want, but it doesn’t bring us closer to what we want. Excessive defensive mechanisms, if not worked on and transformed, can isolate us emotionally and relationally.
When painful experiences become entrenched, they can turn us into victims. We can exaggerate our experience in a dramatic way through a character or minimize the consequences by downplaying traumatic events
Likewise, if we fall into the role of victim we will be devitalized and without energy to face our conflicts. We disconnect from ourselves and live from a false self, a false self that we adopt to survive by adapting to the environment in the least painful way possible.
Observe the felt experience from our disidentified witness
Through this process, we allow ourselves to learn from what we experienced; we are becoming disidentified observers of what is happening We open ourselves to what spontaneously guides us to find answers.
In this phase it is important to allow ourselves to be in contact with our bodily sensations and learn to decode what they keep in a more hidden space. If we are permeable to our experience and allow our consciousness to explore at a deep level, our heart will be open and receptive, feeling free and awake
This is a way to open ourselves to a healthy relationship. We enhance the presence of the purest part of our being in every moment of our existence. For example, we feel anger at a bad answer; Instead of throwing it at “the other,” we focus on the impact of the emotion on ourselves. We deploy our internal deidentified witness. We observe how it affects our body: it generates heat, tension, the desire to scream, itching…
This It will allow us to give a less reactive and more reflective response to what happened It is based on not feeding the disturbing emotion in our minds, stopping before causing an escalation of consequences and letting it go; If it is a pleasant experience, be able to live it by paying conscious attention to the sensations and integrate it into our mental continuum as something positive. This will allow us to incorporate seeds related to pleasant and benevolent feelings towards ourselves, which we can then pass on to others.
Traumatic situations require a more specialized and cautious approach The body stores an emotional memory, and professional support is necessary to release the accumulated pain. The experience is fragmented and we must recover unity, the integration of what we experienced within our mental continuum.
We allow ourselves to accept the experience without rejecting or judging it.
We open ourselves to it fully in intimate connection, without maintaining any distance, and In this step we merge with the experience as it is
If we go further, we will realize how we look for a culprit for our anger, a target at which to direct it. If we stop and allow ourselves to openly “experience” these sensations, the emotion will unfold and dissipate, since it will not find any resistance in us.
We abandon the concept of duality and integrate into unity. We are capable of experimenting, letting go and transforming. We begin to broaden our vision and display a more open and less conditioned mind We take responsibility for our experiences and work with them to free them and transform them into opportunities for personal growth.
This step is the one that requires the greatest training and awareness, and at the same time it is the most enriching, because it allows us to learn and sublimate our experiences, no matter how painful they may be.
Conclusion
These three stages show us how we are learning to relate in a comprehensive way What doors we open or close based on our fears, resistance or dependencies. The freedom or difficulty with which we move between them gives us information about what we need to integrate or compensate for.
We move from one to another depending on the capacity for openness and trust that we have in each situation and the moment in which we find ourselves on an emotional level. Opening requires a process in which We have identified our defenses and we can transform them when we are prepared to do so
Many psychopathological problems are related to fixation on the way we relate to our experiences and the ability to integrate, avoid or seek them. On an everyday level, it’s interesting to look at how we select them. We mobilize great energy influenced by internal dynamics that lead us to contact some and reject others and we don’t necessarily look for the healthiest ones.
When we feel vulnerable, we can reduce our experiential world to limited environments and without realizing it our space becomes smaller and more constricted. Sometimes we feel attracted to people who immerse us in scenarios where we retraumatize old, unresolved wounds. We become silent victims again.
To the extent that we begin to know ourselves and relate better to ourselves, from affection, respect and strength, trust and friendship will give way to accepting that vulnerability that allows us to remain open to the experience of the world as it is
Allowing ourselves to be present with our experience, feeling it direct and without filters, will reveal unknown facets and a fresher and more renewed vision of ourselves. We become co-creators of our lives.
