If you are in a relationship that is negatively impacting your emotional, mental, or physical health, hurting others you love, or compromising your inner values, you are likely in a toxic relationship – and addictive neural patterns are in control.

If you have not already, take time to reflect on the dynamics, and to consider what you can and cannot do – that would allow you to break free of their control, and to take charge of your emotional response, so that your mind and body may restore balance, and let healing begin.

In Part 1 of this series, we identified five toxic patterns partners get stuck in that activate one another’s protective-response patterns. In Part 2, we looked at the neuroscience beneath the emotional command circuits that destabilize each partner’s inner sense of emotional safety in relation to the other. We then touched on key factors that affect relational balance in Part 3, and considered the first step partners can take – cultivating awareness of one another’s triggers – to break free of the toxic patterns and restore balance in your lives.

In this final post in the series, we continue with 4 remaining steps of 5 that, when mindfully applied, can help partners stop, change and move away from toxic scripted patterns that destabilize their sense of emotional safety, particularly in triggering situations that activate each partner’s preconditioned protective neural patterns.

Steps to End Toxic Relating Patterns

So what can you and your partner do to restore your inner sense of emotional safety and love in relation to one another, especially in challenging moments? Here are 5 steps to get you started in putting together an action plan that can serve as a springboard for considering healthier options – and making conscious choices to stay free of toxic relating patterns.

1. Cultivate awareness of one another’s triggers.

Partners tend to focus on the details of their problems with one another. As a result, they get lost arguing repeatedly over the particulars of who did or didn’t do what, to whom, when and where, how often, and so on. Nothing, however, affects the quality of a relationship more (and therefore, a discussion between partners) than the level of emotional safety each partner brings to the moment in which they interact. (To continue reading Step 1, see Part 3)

2. Accept that healing yourself is a prerequisite.

To balance the equations of your relationship, you must first accept the following: Healing yourself is prerequisite to healing your relationship. It was never your job to take over another person’s behaviors, or emotional life, as if they were some kind of a fix-it project. When you do (even with children, by the way), both the fixer and fixed suffer the consequences of getting into ‘power struggles.’

At best, it stunts emotional growth. At worst, it builds resentment. It sends a message that you do not value the other as a person, their ability to do their own thinking, their capacity to master and handle upsetting emotions, and so on. Meanwhile, reminders, angry outbursts, the silent treatment, shame, guilt, intimidating putdowns, etc., do not work in the long run – except to make things worse.

You cannot fix your partner, or control what they feel or do, any more than they can fix or control you. You can, however, affect huge changes by being a calming presence from within.

Not surprisingly, human relationships follow the laws of nature. Like mathematics, relationships are a science. Unlike statistics, the field of mathematics is series of discoveries and not inventions. Scientists discovered laws and formulas that existed, and have used them with precision, for example, to land a space capsule at any predetermined location in the universe (time permitting, of course). The natural response to being treated as ‘incapable’ of doing your own thinking, for example, follows Newton’s third Law of motion, which states for every action in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction.

The more you try to force change, the more this activates one another’s emotional defenses. As a result, neither of you are open to the influence of the other.

No one likes being someone’s fix-it project (although it may be flattering at first, it gets old sooner or later). Why? It goes against our hardwired yearnings. As human beings, we have inborn urges to seek to be accepted for the unique value and contributions we bring to life. These are core emotional drives. (Look closely, and you’ll see these drives in children as well.)

In a healthy relationship, partners are in best position to give the other useful feedback. In toxic patterns, most feedback falls by the wayside because of how it is delivered  – or received. Neither heart is open; and when the heart is closed, so is the mind. The body’s autonomic nervous system ensures all influence is blocked, as a protective defense.

Safe to say, the intense focus you or your partner have on fixing one another other (rather than healing self) is one of the main problems. Any notions that you can, should or must control or fix the other are illusions, perpetuated by romanticized ideals.

Your efforts to fix the other’s behaviors or feelings about you, or change a particular situation, etc., are the cause of much discontent, resistance and suffering. It’s also been a way to avoid a life task awaiting you: healing your self and your relationship with you.

The latest findings in neuroscience reveal the human brain is always in subconscious communication with other brains, your loved ones in particular. Your brain can be a calming or disorienting influence. In either case, it is designed to work inside-out. To heal your relationship, or to be a healing influence on your partner, is an inside job of healing you.

In other words, you cannot do the emotional work for your partner (or children); however, you can calm your own mind and heart, in challenging situations, and allow miracles to happen (potentially).

It is simply not possible to change or to heal others against their will, as it is not possible to ‘control’ what the other thinks and feels. You can however heal yourself, respond in healthy ways, learn to love and fully accept yourself, honor your needs and aspirations and life – and by doing so, you will increase the chances of healing your relationship – and the possibility of inspiring the other to engage in their healing work.

You have the ability to bring a calming presence to a situation which would create the necessary conditions for personal healing to take place. Is it easy? No. Is it essential, and worthwhile? Yes, it can make the difference between living merely to survive, and living to thrive as authentic beings.

To break free of toxic relating patterns and restore balance, accept the following bottom lines that govern the making of healthy relationships:

• You cannot fix your partner’s behaviors or emotional states.
• You cannot do the work that is theirs to do to learn to stretch in order to love courageously with their whole heart.
• Your focus on fixing or healing one another (instead of yourselves) is, and has been the main problem.
• Your attempts to fix the other with angry outbursts, pleading, intimidation, guilt or shame, etc., are, and have been, the cause of much suffering.
• Healing your relationship with you is prerequisite to healing your couple relationship.

Give yourself complete permission to let go of any responsibility of having to fix the other’s emotional states. The best, most powerful, and prerequisite option to healing your couple relationship, and to breaking free from toxic patterns, is to shift most of your focus to healing your self from within – it’s an inside job. Read more ...]]> http://www.riverparkpsych.com/2012/02/toxic-couple-relationships-5-steps-to-breaking-free-of-toxic-patterns-healing-restoring-balance-4-of-4/feed/ 0 http://www.riverparkpsych.com/2012/02/how-to-be-alone-2/ http://www.riverparkpsych.com/2012/02/how-to-be-alone-2/#comments Tue, 07 Feb 2012 20:03:17 +0000 MollyAllen http://www.riverparkpsych.com/?p=886 Achieving the goal of learning to be OK with oneself leads to greater richness in our relationships with others – including the ability to leave behind ‘toxic’ people in our lives, and the ability to seek out truly satisfying inter-connectedness.  Molly Allen, PsyD