Today, we are talking about challenging relationships.
Let’s start with the term challenging. We’re talking about challenging relationships. What makes something challenging? What makes something a problem?
My answer? What makes something challenging is our judgment about it, it is our thinking about it. You could have two identical relationships with the exact same dynamics; someone can see this relationship as problematic and challenging and someone else can think that it is a fantastic and wonderful relationship. The same exact dynamic, but two very different takes on it.
The only difference is how we decide to think about something.
That is a really powerful question that you can ask yourself: think about your relationships. If you have a challenging relationship – maybe with your boss, maybe with your partner, maybe with a coworker or a friend – notice what you are thinking when you think about that relationship.
When asked to think about and discuss challenging relationships, we often think we are describing those relationships factually. However, as difficult as this may seem to grasp, it is only our perception and our thoughts about that relationship, not the facts that we are describing.
I describe in this episode the four types of behaviours you can have in relationships and, identifying your behaviour and understanding what is behind, will give you an agency over that relationship and you can decide if you want to keep it being challenging or instead change it into something that serves you more.
Yes you heard me right. To change a relationship, we don’t need to change two people. we can just work on ourselves and our thoughts and the relationship takes an incredible turn.
The 4 types of behaviour in a challenging relationship are:
- Are you just pretending and burying your head in the sand and being indifferent to it.
- Are you blaming, and controlling, and putting the stick on the ground for yourself and shaming the other person?
- Are you complying, and people pleasing, and denying yourself? and, really, seething resentment underneath the surface?
- Have you gotten to the point where you started lying, defying, and talking behind the other person’s back. Gossiping about them
Tune in and listen to the full episode to understnad the 4 types of behaviour in detail and learn my steps for managing challenging relationships.