An Invitation to Rewire How You Do Relationships

Have you been longing for more?

The Essential Skills Relationship Bootcamp facilitated by me along with my esteemed colleagues, Victoria Easa and Juliane Taylor Shore, is fast approaching the weekend of October 24-25, and registration closes on October 15th.

We are shaping up to be a juicy bunch!

If you are longing for more "Relational Mindfulness" this workshop is full of exercises, practices and offerings that will help you look within at your own ways of showing up in relationships. It offers maps of how to shift into greater intimacy and relational well being.  

This online workshop is meant to meet you where you are, provide safety and welcome a variety of comfort levels. For some of us, going deep into our own process or making brave moves with our partners is the right next step. For others, sitting back, observing, and slowly taking in the paths to relational well-being that are being offered is a better fit. The great news is this workshop is designed for you to make it match you. With three facilitators you get to hear different voices sharing the wisdom found in the couples model created by Terry Real. With small break-out groups and facilitator support you'll be able to dive deep if you want to. With most of the concepts being presented in the big group there is a place for questions, conversation and just sitting back and absorbing. With this much safety, space and so many options for how to engage, we can accommodate a variety of learning styles.  

I started studying Relational Life Therapy roughly 4 years ago; it was one of the first models I found for relational healing that offered profound hope for shifting the most ingrained of relationship conflicts. The Relational Living practice makes explicit long standing emotional patterns of trigger and response and cultivates new opportunities to rewire how we do relationships. 

I met Vickey and Jules while training to lead this bootcamp with Terry Real in Mexico (with our spouses) on the cusp of the COVID shut- down. The six of us were drawn together, quite organically and so it made sense for the three of us to reconnect to co-facilitate Bootcamp.

We share similarities in our journeys, our own personal work, our relational work with our partners...and our commitments to our individual practices as therapists. And we each bring unique approaches and styles to our teaching, sure to energize the material and provide a variety of paths into the practice. 

Jules brings a profound understanding of interpersonal neurobiology and offers explanations for how healing happens. She'll help us understand why we do what we do, how we can see it and how we can break it down.

Vickey brings a very human ability to dive into our stories and uses herself and her lived experience to make this work incredibly relatable. 

And I bring a focus on the real and powerful possibility for relational healing when we can learn to bring consciousness, awareness, relationship mindfulness — Connectfulness® — to the moment. I focus not only on trauma and stickiness but on the true power of healing and growth.

If you have been wondering if your partner would come — if you are thinking ‘I am hoping for something more in how I feel day to day in my relationships’ — this is an invitation.  

We hope to see you among us, moving toward greater relational health together.

Click here to register.

Join Us to Activate Profound Relational Healing That Can Span Generations

If you’ve been following along with my posts to you over these last three weeks you may sense my excitement about the enormous potential for transformation that bringing in your authentic voice can have on all of your relationships: to yourself, to your partner, to your family and to your world. But once you do bring it in, it’s likely you’ll benefit from tools to navigate this new terrain and deepen your understanding of it.

What does relationship mean? 

We grow as humans through relationships. We learn about what’s safe and what’s not safe through our relationships as infants with our caregivers, as children with the people in our lives and ultimately as adults in relationship with ourselves, our partners and our own children. 

Relational healing has a lot to do with how we learn to see ourselves. The intersection of who we are and how we connect to what’s bigger than us impacts how we show up day to day, and how we understand what’s safe. All of that feeds into what triggers us. We often find ways we contort, or adapt to protect ourselves. Often there are stories we tell ourselves (usually passed down through generations) and we become triggered by how these stories affect not only ourselves but our understandings of each other in adult relationships with an intimate partner.

When we start to notice what we bring to the interpretation of the other, via our own story, and feel into where and how it triggers us in a familiar way, we begin to un-blend or disentangle from “story.” This is the moment when we can actually heal ourselves. We can notice the places where in relationship, in real time, in real life, both individually or together we can activate profound relational healing that can span generations. 

I’m thrilled to be co facilitating On Oct 24th & 25th: 10:30am-6pm (EST) a 2-day online weekend Relational Bootcamp for couples, individuals, and therapists seeking certification training in the Relational Life model.

This is an authorized presentation of Terry Real's Essential Skills Relationship Bootcamp co-facilitated by me, Rebecca Wong, Victoria Easa and Juliane Taylor Shore. We are all certified Relational Life Therapists who collectively have 40 of years of experience helping individuals and couples move out of dark times. 

To learn more and register to join us, click here. 

Speak again soon,

p.s. have you listened to my most recent podcast episode, featuring Jules, on the science behind how your relationship can help you heal?

Why Can It Be so Difficult to Ask for What We Want in Relationships?

I know that asking for what we want isn’t nearly as easy as it sounds. 

Often, in our original families, we don’t really learn to share our truths; to be honest about what we feel and what we need. It’s no wonder we have trouble doing it now in our own family systems or close partnerships.

It’s not that we were taught to be untruthful. It’s just that we adapted to the silent messages that were passed along to us through our parents or care givers: 

that we were too much,

not enough, 

too loud, 

that we were too quiet,

annoying,

silly,

not good enough at something, 

not interested in the right things. 

Sometimes we were put in charge, asked to manage things we didn’t know how to, asked to process things that were too complicated, asked to step up too soon…etc. 

We may have become small in an attempt towards invisibility because it was safer or we may have become reactive in order to cope with whatever was happening because we felt threatened. That’s how we protected ourselves… 

Throughout these times, we may never have thought of these cumulative instances as overt traumas or abusive situations and yet, little by little, our needs were not being met as children. 

It’s not that our carers didn’t love us or want what was best, but sometimes just because they couldn’t see our needs and meet them, or adapt their own behavior we never learned how to acknowledge what we needed, what we really wanted and how to ask for help when needed.

In order not to rock the boat, not to bring shame on ourselves or our parents, not to disrupt, or lose whatever amount of respect or love we felt we’d secured for ourselves, we inadvertently continued, past the point of their usefulness, these assumed behaviors—and maybe we’re coming to see they don’t serve us anymore.

Sometimes we’re not even aware that we’re enacting them. 

But these adaptive coping legacies now impact our relationships with our partners and children and there’s a feeling of being stuck in a cycle of behavior that doesn’t help.

So it may be time…to make a choice. To take a very conscious step. To stake your claim on this very inconvenient truth:

that your authentic voice is now needed. 

And the voice that tells you you’re too much, so you keep quiet, or that you’re not enough, so you yell…you can talk to that voice. 

It’s not easy and yet, I must say…once you’ve done it. Wow. The shift is momentous. 

Staking your claim; talking to your old voices; seeing your Self, seeing your partner, listening… is becoming RELATIONAL instead of reactive and is a breath of fresh air for a family system.

Doing it with 3 Certified Relational Life Therapists is a safe, clear and (dare we say) fun way to commence!

If you’re ready to find out how, click here. 

Speak again soon,

p.s. stay tuned for my next podcast episode, available later this week, to learn more. 

Changing the Course of our Relationships

In my last post I mentioned strategies for changing the course of our relationships to ourselves, to our partners and to the world. 

There’s a lot of talk about compassion in relationships, and the world needs more of it, for sure.

But first I want to talk about an idea harder to digest than compassion: Contempt.

Let me begin to explain how essential an understanding of contempt is to our relationships and how it functions in them.

In our culture, we’re constantly inundated with the message that we're not enough, that we're inadequate, or could be better if only… 

This gives rise to un-healthy self-esteem, borne of a collective drive to feel good about ourselves. But it leads us into shame-spirals that pull us into a one-down feeling of inferiority or into a judgmental feeling of one-up grandiosity, superiority. Both positions are unhealthy and both hurt our relationships. 

Terry Real states over and over again that "the core energy in both, shame and grandiosity, is contempt."

Let’s unpack that for a sec… 

When contempt swings inward, we call that shame. When contempt swings outward onto those around us, we call it grandiosity. The energy itself is fundamentally the same. We may even use the same words to berate others as we use to berate ourselves. 

In his book, the New Rules of Marriage, Terry Real says,

“You know you’re in a real relationship the day you look at this person and realize they’re exquisitely designed to stick the burning spear into your eyeball. This person is going to throw me right back into the soup that I thought I was going to avoid. And that’s the good news, because that’s where the healing lies.”

Often we work our whole lives to avoid feeling pain and then we meet someone who has a unique power to trigger us! And we think that bolstering ourselves or blaming our partner is how we avoid feeling the pain. We think we’ll be better off if we escape pain and go into blame and shame…the truth is, we won’t be. 

We won’t be better off if we indulge, justify, mount a case, punish or withdraw; if we walk around huffing, puffing, yelling, finger-pointing, or turning our homes into war zones. 

We're just perpetuating and replicating the cycle of contempt. 

The practice of bringing awareness to how contempt is showing up in your relationship, and within your Self, can change everything. Life can become more manageable, and more, well, life-sized. Dynamics can change, loosen, transform. 

We all know what a life lived in fear motivates people to do on the world stage. What does fear make you do in your relationship? 

Wouldn’t it be easier to step into an honest reckoning with your deepest fears and learn how to ask for what you want? 

If you’re ready to find out how, consider joining myself and two fabulous certified relational life therapists a 2-day online weekend Relational Bootcamp for couples, individuals and also therapists training in the Relational Life model.

Speak Soon,

How do you get what you want in your relationship?

Yes, the world feels out of control.
Few of us are getting much of what we want these days. 

But let’s start with you. 

How do you get what you want in your relationship?
I ask because our relationships are NOT out of reach or out of our control. 

In fact relationships are one of the few areas we can profoundly impact day to day.

Sometimes we think we need to shut down the part of ourselves that still wants connection because there’s so much else requiring our attention. 

Or because the silence, or the arguments or the escalating discussions that hit the same familiar wall don’t seem to offer us a way forward. 

Our relationships are being tested. It’s true. Challenges to our lives, day in and day out, to our equilibriums, persist.  And unfortunately in the hardest of times it is often our relationships that seem easiest to put off dealing with. But when they’re working it’s our relationships that give us baseline comfort and empower us to meet these challenges with clarity. 

So stay tuned. 

In future posts I’ll be telling you more about a weekend of just you, or just you and your partner, and a team of three relational life therapists to guide you through every step and offer skills to make the process understandable and doable. Immediately. 

It will be a time to really unpack the habits that haven’t been working and replace them with strategies that will change the course of your relationship to yourself, to your partner and to the world.

Speak Soon,

the essence of the human-condition

the essence of the human-condition

each 

caught up

relational 

tangles 

the legacy 

we leave 

tied to 

untangling

and 

connecting

knotted heirloom

invisible scars

collective healing 

re-membering

disarming self 

experience safety 

resting 

in other’s 

nervous system

i am

safe 

with you

i belong

begin

dropping 

defenses 

unclenching 

releasing 

control 

surrender

in space 

between us

meet

other 

again 

oneness

— rebecca wong 
connectfulness.com

INTENTIONAL INTIMACY: when your past meets your present

Contribution by Dr. Lily Zehner

Intimacy is a delicate and powerful force in all aspects of our lives - not just in the bedroom and not just with your romantic partner. Intimacy can be experienced in all relationships - even with your in-laws!

Intimacy is knowing we will be seen, heard, and accepted exactly as we are. It’s about trusting that you can show up - vulnerably, authentically, and wholeheartedly.

And yet, it can be terrifying.

This is a story about how I figured out how to intentionally create ideal intimacy with my in-laws and aligned our relationship with my needs and values.

Unspoken Hope

There was a disconnect with my in-laws, and it was starting to weigh heavily on my marriage - a relationship built on deep and sacred intimacy.

I craved a relationship with my in-laws that felt safe, reciprocal, and fulfilling.I love and care for them. They are generous, kind, and light-hearted. Yet, whenever we would all spend time together, I would leave feeling unfulfilled. For years, I couldn’t figure it out.

Every time I spent time with them, I hoped “this time it may be different.” That it would be nourishing on a deep level. That it would be reciprocal. That it would leave me feeling loved and received exactly as I am.

But then it all became clear to me. One of the things that draws me to my in-laws is the way they value humor and play. And yet, I was struggling  to meet them there. I was afraid that they would laugh at the real me or take something important about me too lightly. In my childhood it wasn’t safe to play and laughter was seldom kind.

Culture Clash

Suddenly I got it:  we had a culture clash. It wasn’t that they didn’t love me, it was that they showed love differently and I didn’t know how to receive it. It was like a language barrier.

And so, I needed to ask for what I wanted. What I craved were open-ended questions that went deeper than the moments we shared together. I wanted to reveal something more of myself, but they just didn’t seem to care.

Turns out, they did care.

I found out when I took a leap: I wrote a heartfelt letter. And I actually sent it. It felt like a brave thing to do. Even more important, it felt necessary. Yes, I was scared to do it, but I reminded myself that my husband and I had created a safe world together and this was the right thing to do for our relationship and for our relationship with his parents.

When they wrote back, they told me exactly what I had hoped to hear. Turns out, they wanted to create a relationship where everyone felt seen and truly comfortable too.

They felt like it was an act of love to avoid asking questions. I am the kind of person who feels loved when people want to know more about me.  

Months later, I continue to see proof in words and actions from my in-laws that shows that we can feel safe even when we’re being vulnerable. Now, I feel like I can show up authentically in every one of our phone calls, emails, and days spent together.

It Begins With You

Here’s the thing about intimacy: you have to first know what you need and desire. Once you are clear, it is up to you to communicate your needs with others. Often you have expectations of others’ love and are left wondering why they can’t provide you with what you want. The question is, have you ever shared this with them?  

I didn’t realize that the reason my in-laws weren’t loving me as I needed was because I never told them. They loved me as they knew how and I loved them how I knew how. None of us were wrong. We were just missing each other’s attempts to connect, doing the best we knew how.

Don’t Wait for Intimacy. Ask for It.

If you are feeling a disconnect from those you love, please take the time to get clear with your desires and needs. Find a way to share them whether in a dialogue, a letter, or otherwise.

In the end, the sweetness of intimacy is worth putting yourself out there, taking a risk, and being vulnerable. Know yourself. Build trust. Show up as yourself and allow yourself to be seen, heard, and accepted while offering the same to others - that’s what all the deep, nourishing connections in life are made of.

Dr. Lily Zehner has inspired you to expand your idea of intimacy and take steps to make it part of all of your most important relationships. Sign up for our newsletter for more insights into how you can practice loving Connectfulness in your life.

PART 5 | WHAT IS PLAY?

An 8-part blog series, helping parent couples reconnect.

A note on the Reconnecting Parent Couples Series: These eight posts present  perspectives and advice from respected colleagues and experts from across the world. I’ll also weave in my personal and professional discoveries and introduce you to aspects of my evolving relationship practice: Connectfulness.   

>> Part 4 | DISCONNECTION HAPPENS, OR, YES, HAPPY COUPLES FIGHT TOO! <<

When it is incorporated into your daily rhythm, play can fundamentally shift everything about how you and the people you love relate to one another...I find that’s especially important for parenting couples to keep in mind.

So what gives? Why does the word and concept of play totally stress people out? Perhaps you are unsure about what play looks like.

“Play's a little like pornography in that you know it when you see it.” Jill Vialet, the CEO of Playworks

Well, duh!  But that doesn’t exactly help you start adding more play into the connections that fuel your daily life, does it?

So, what is play?

Play is a state of mind rather than an activity.

When at play you’re in a state of enjoyment. Your sense of  self-consciousness and sense of time are both suspended. Whatever you are engaged in, you want to do it again and again. Though you may feel  like it’s  purposeless activity, something important and healing is happening…

Play can be hard to define. It can include  so much. Humor, flirtation, games, roughhousing, storytelling, fantasizing, collecting, movement, exploring, competing, directing, creating.

Play looks like different things to different people, but here is what we know:

Play is a natural and biologically driven social exploration. It helps you learn about, and experience your world and your relationships by encouraging discovery.and feeding curiosity.

Play is inhibited and shuts down when you don’t feel safe (In my practice, when my clients can’t or aren’t playing in  their relationships I want to know more about what doesn’t feel safe. And we slowly begin our exploration there).

Play allows you to practice essential life and relational skills. It is full of triumphs and failures and everything in between.

Play is magical, integrative, and healing. It allows you to process, digest, and gain understanding about your life and your relationships. 

And perhaps most importantly, play happens in your mind. In fact, recent findings in neuroscience are showing that nothing lights up our brains like play does.

Why do we need to play?

We adult humans keep forgetting about the purpose of play, or we simply don’t value play. I get that, it’s so easy to do. When you are in the flow of play, it feels totally purposeless. And part of being a grown up is to have a clear sense of purpose, right?

We push children of all ages to play less & sit more. We are placing value on decoding and recall rather than comprehension and collaboration. Children are missing out on the experiential learning that they can only absorb through the process of play.

But then, it’s no wonder that we’ve taken the play out of children’s education - adults have eliminated play from their busy lives. they don’t know how to model or pass on something as purposeless as “just playing.”

We often think that as adults we shouldn't play, that we should stay serious and focused all of the time and that couldn't be farther from the truth. When couples are really stuck in the thick of stress, I suggest bringing in some kind of play. It can allow partners to connect in a light hearted way. It can also be a great way to reminisce and re-live the earlier days of the relationship when things were less stressful and more fun. Dr. Lily A. Zehner

We are designed to play throughout our whole lifetime

Play is very much a pre-programed social mammalian skill. Watch a pack of puppies, or a litter of kittens. How do they interact with one another and learn appropriate social behaviors?

They play!

They wrestle with one another, they push and pull on boundaries and they either get redirected by one another or mamma when they’ve gone too far or they tire out in a happy exhausted pile, content with one another.

And it’s not different for us humans. We learn how to connect in play.

Your sense of safety and trust in relationship are established through play signals such as eye-contact, facial expression, voice tone, posture, gesturing, timing and intensity of response.

In play, it's safe to fail, to fall get up and try again.  Play makes it easier to adapt and stay connected.  

If you want to keep growing, you must keep playing

Stuart Brown, MD author of Play: How it Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination and Invigorates the Soul and the founder of the National Institute for Play says that when we stop playing, “our behaviour becomes fixed. We are not interested in new and different things. We find fewer opportunities to take pleasure in the world around us.”

If you want to do more than merely survive in your relationships, you need to play. Couples who thrive know how to play.

Play reminds us not to take life too seriously. Couples often get stuck on recycling the "bad stuff" in their relationships and stop making new, fun memories. An analogy I like to use is that people have two rooms where they keep their memories of their relationships. One room has all the "good" memories and the other room has all the "bad" ones. How we feel about our relationship is how much time we spend in each room. By playing together couples spend more time in the "good" room and also develop new, happy memories. Mark Vaughan MAMFT, AMFT

When you start to make play your mindset — the attitude you use to approach life situations — you get to practice how you perceive and respond to other's emotional states in a safe, no pressure way.

Play is the glue that connects people to one another. In my next post we’ll dive deeper into how you can rediscover play if you’ve lost it, stay tuned!

>> Part 6 | Play Is Relationship Glue <<

 

working with me

“The mind is everything. What you think you become.”―Buddha

Therapy can be extremely rewarding when you engage in the process of trying on new perspectives, tweaking habits that don’t serve you, and learning to nurture yourself and your relationships in new ways. The work of opening and examining your inner world — and trusting to share that process with another — requires considerable courage.

Together, we cultivate a healing relationship that nurtures the delicate balance of listening to your inner wisdom, respecting your limits, and encouraging growth. We take time to explore your hopes, joys, and fears to better understand your journey and find more satisfaction in your life and relationships. I help you build awareness of your own strengths and deepen your bond to yourself and become the person (or partnership) you would like to be.

As a psychotherapist specializing in maternal and relationship wellness, I work with women and couples to enhance both partners ability to understand and communicate effectively with one another, work as an effective, loving team and rebuild and/or maintain intimacy in your relationship.  Helping women, couples and families through the pregnancy and postpartum and parenting spectrum is a primary focus of my practice.

I work with many new(ish) mothers who have lost track or forgotten how to nurture and care for themselves. There is no wellness in depletion.  Mothers are sacred. They hold the family together with their pivotal nurturing role. Motherhood (and fatherhood, too) provides opportunity to grow beyond by nurturing and meeting needs within ourselves and rediscovering our sacredness.  It is for that reason that I believe whole-family wellness begins with the mother’s wellness.

I am very interested in how the mind and body work together. I believe all patterns and habits --of both movement and of thought-- can be refined and honed. Sometimes this work is best achieved in my psychotherapy office, sometimes in my gym.  Life presents challenges and stressors. Utilizing weight and fitness training in therapy is a novelty for sure, and it's not for everyone, but I do offer it to select clients.  Regardless of where we work, the premise of the work is that we can practice and hone mental training cues that work best for you in therapy/in sport/under the barbell, and then you can learn to translate them into your life and your relationships.

When you choose to enter into a nurturing therapeutic relationship with me, we utilize my unique blend of psychotherapy and coaching to reshape mind, body, and spirit.  We build on your strengths.  We tap into the power of relationships, first through developing our therapeutic relationship with one another, then by honing your relationship with yourself and eventually through coaching you how to use what you have learned in therapy in all of your other life relationships.  We practice mindfulness and compassion; we nurture wellness.  Wellness is multi-dimensional; body, mind & spirit --it begins in the mind and is nurtured through our self-view and our relationships with others.

In other words, we tap into your strength potential and get you good with yourself --body, mind & spirit-- then we build on that and make your connections to others in your life stronger too.

In Warmth & Wellness,