Breathing for Mental Health

The way we breathe changes the way we feel. Each of these exercises can help you feel less fear, sadness, and anxiety. 

General recommendations

• You can’t fill your lungs if you’re hunched over. Sit up straight or lie down, and tilt your head back to make room for more air in your lungs.

• Intentional breathing sends an “I’m safe” message to the brain, helping the body relax.

Basic Breath

• Breathe in through the nose

• Fill the lungs completely

• Breathe out through the mouth

Teaspoon Breath

• Breathe in deep through the nose

• Fill the lungs completely, then breathe in one more teaspoon of air

• Let all the air out rapidly through the mouth, with an audible sigh

Heartbeat Breath

• Breathe in deep through the nose

• Hold for two heartbeats

• Exhale through the mouth

• Hold for two heartbeats

• Try holding for three heartbeats, and then four

Straw Breath

• Breathe in deep through the nose

• Fill the lungs completely

• Breathe out slowly through pursed lips, as if you were breathing through a straw

Dynamic Breathing

This method involves breathing fast and deep, through the mouth and nose at the same time. It consists of a number of fast, deep breaths followed by two breath holds:  the first hold with empty lungs, and the second with full lungs. The entire cycle can be repeated several times. 

• Inhale fast and deep, first into the stomach, then into the chest

• Exhale fast and deep

• Repeat five times

• Now exhale completely and hold your breath with empty lungs until you feel the urge to breathe

• When you feel the urge to breathe, fill your lungs completely and hold your breath until you feel the urge to exhale

• Notice how your body feels. Pay attention to your heart beating, to the blood rushing through your veins, and to any sensations of dizziness, tingling, or mild euphoria.

Gradually increase the number of breaths to 10, 15, 20, 25, and then 30. Repeat the whole cycle several times. You can find a demonstration by searching for “Wim Hof Breathing” on YouTube. 

Focused Breathing

Breathe in, breathe out. Focus on the sensation of air entering your nose, and leaving your mouth. Cold on the way in, warm on the way out. Soon your mind will think about something else. Gently bring it back to the sensation of breathing. When weightlifters complete one movement they call it a “rep,” short for “repetition.” This act of noticing that your mind has wandered, and bringing it back to the breath, is also a rep. Just as a muscle grows stronger with exercise, your mind will become more powerful as you train it to focus. 

When your mind wanders you have not failed. The act of bringing your mind back to focus on your breath is the skill you are developing. Your mind’s desire to think helps you strengthen your focus the same way gravity helps the weightlifter get stronger. This gravity is not the enemy, you can use it to grow stronger. 

When you focus on your breath you are learning how to reside fully in the present. Our minds love to wander into the past and future, to revisit old memories and imagine things that could happen. Focused breathing teaches the mind to pay attention to what is happening right now. 

Escaping the Anxious/Avoidant Trap

"We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love." — Sigmund Freud

Defining the Trap

Most marriages incorporate a dynamic where one partner tries to soothe anxiety by seeking emotional and physical closeness, while the other tries to soothe anxiety by seeking emotional and physical distance Each partner's behavior intensifies and reinforces the other’s. This is called the anxious-avoidant or pursuer-distancer dynamic. I’ll use the second term here because both sides of the dynamic are equally anxious.

From the pursuer’s point of view, the distancer seems to want to not participate in the relationship. From the distancer’s point of view, the pursuer isn’t capable of calming down without help. The truth is that neither of the two are capable of holding onto their sense of self while maintaining a healthy emotional and romantic connection. 

Childhood Roots

Pursuers fear abandonment, and distancers fear engulfment. Both of these fears are appropriate for children, but are not applicable to adults, because adults can take care of themselves so well that they can’t really be abandoned or engulfed. Pursuers were usually raised by distancing parents who were busy, unavailable, checked-out or avoidant.  Distancers were usually raised by pursuing parents who were overbearing, hovering, and relentless. Parent-child relationships require a balance of togetherness and separateness, just like marriage. Children have no choice but to balance out their parents: if you have a pursuer parent or primary caregiver, you learn to be distancer, and if you have a distancer parent, you learn to be pursuers. As adults, we have the ability to grow out of these dynamics. 

Escaping the Trap

Pursuing and distancing are ways of managing anxiety and avoiding intimacy. The pursuer thinks he is seeking intimacy, but he is actually just trying to get his partner to help him calm down. True intimacy comes from togetherness combined with self-soothing, not from getting your partner to calm you down. The distancer calms their anxiety by checking out of the relationship entirely, and then relying on their pursuing partner to maintain some kind of unhealthy connection. 

The cycle ends when the pursuer stops pursuing and the distancer stops distancing. You can start the process of healing by admitting that your partner is not the cause of your distress, and they will not be the solution to your distress. Each person’s anxiety is their own responsibility. Pursuing and distancing are two sides of the same coin, ways of managing one’s own anxiety by means of another person. Both partners must begin to take full responsibility for their own distress, and figure out how to feel better without placing that responsibility on their partner’s shoulders. 

For the distancer, this means self-soothing while maintaining connection. For the pursuer, this means self-soothing instead of using connection to calm down. Both partners can improve their relationship by saying “I’m going to leave the room and calm down. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.” For the pursuer, this means not relying on his partner for anxiety management. For the distancer, this means stepping back into connection after self-calming. 

Seven Steps for Self-Soothing

Here’s what you do during those twenty minutes:

1. Scan your body. Figure out where you feel your emotional discomfort on a physical level

2. Focus your attention gently on that place in your body, the place that doesn’t feel good. Usually this is somewhere in the chest/abdomen area.

3. Imagine holding that sensation gently and kindly, like you would cradle a kitten or a baby. This is how you self-sooth.

4. Give the unpleasant sensation permission to stay as long as it needs to stay. This is self-acceptance.

5. Realize that you will be OK even if the unpleasant sensation stays for a long time. When you were a child, you could not have handled such intensity. As an adult, you totally can.

6. Take a deep breath in through the nose. Fill your lungs up all the way. Then, once they are completely full, suck in a bit more air through your nose. Hold for a second, and then let it all out through your mouth. This is called a “physiological sigh,” you can look it up on YouTube. It’s been shown to decrease anxiety.

7. Every time you self-soothe, your body becomes less afraid of its own intense sensations. You become less afraid of your own intense emotions, and of your partner’s intense emotions. You become more capable of experience a calm, healthy connection with the person you love. You are becoming more capable of love.

Why Do We Fall in Love with Abusive Partners?

A child’s brain

A child’s brain is predisposed to perceive her parents as trustworthy and good, even when they aren’t. This mind-twisting persists into adulthood, making it hard to perceive cruelty in potential partners before it’s too late.

Consider Jake, a physically attractive young man with a penchant for cruelty. Most women reject Jake quickly because they are disgusted by the cruel way he treats people. Eventually Jake meets Kate, who doesn’t seem bothered by his behavior.

Kate’s father

Kate grew up with a cruel father. As a little girl, her mind learned to perceive his behavior as normal and acceptable. She has been in multiple abusive relationships and can’t tell the difference between a cruel man and a kind man.

Kate will have to reprocess her memories of her father if she wants to become perceptive of cruelty in other men. Kate’s therapist helps her start this process after she recounts something her father did to her:

Therapist: Did your father know you were suffering?
Kate: I’m not sure.
Therapist: If you did that to a little girl, would you know that she was suffering?
Kate: Yes, of course!
Therapist: Did your father know you were suffering?
Kate: (pause) I don’t know. Maybe he did?
Therapist: Was your suffering acceptable to him?
Kate: I… I don’t think so.
Therapist: Could he have stopped your suffering?
Kate: Yes.
Therapist: (pause) Was he OK with you suffering?
Kate: (pause) I guess he was.

Kate had a clear memory of her father’s actions, but not of his internal state. Her little-girl brain had constructed a world where her father was not responsible for his own behavior, didn’t know what he was doing, and was unaware of the consequences of his actions. None of this was true, but it is the way abused children see the world. When Kate reprocessed the memory with her adult brain, she was able to create a clear reconstruction of what role her father had actually played. 

Kate’s twisted perception of her father

Kate’s perception of her father was helpful and necessary in when she was young. Kate had no power to change her father’s behavior, so she took care of herself as well as possible given her situation. She adapted to the world she was living in by imagining that her father didn’t know what he was doing. That adaptation served her well in childhood, but it puts her in danger as an adult.

As Kate untwists her mind, she becomes capable of perceiving cruelty in the men she dates. She starts to pick up on subtle hints, like how he talks about his coworkers, or how he treats people at a restaurant. She replaces her childhood behavioral patterns with new adult skills. She learns to take care of herself by quickly rejecting cruel men.

Further reading

David Schnarch’s book Brain Talk is an excellent resource for learning how to untwist your mind.

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I help couples build lasting, loving relationships. Book a free consultation here.

Exercises for Calmer Connection

This is a guest post by relationship coach Cat Roebuck.

These three exercises, developed by sex and relationship therapist Dr. David Schnarch, are designed to help you learn to be physically and emotionally close to your partner without being overwhelmed by anxiety or other difficult emotions. They work best when practiced regularly over time.

Both partners remain clothed in all three exercises. While the skills they help you build make it possible to enjoy more fulfilling sex together, these exercises stand alone. They are not foreplay and following them directly with sex is counterproductive.

Exercise 1: Hugging Until Relaxed

Stand on your own two feet, and put your arms around your partner in a full-body hug.

Don’t lean on your partner physically or emotionally. If you do, and one of you loses balance, you both fall.

As you hug, focus on your own experience, not on calming or comforting your partner or trying to figure out what they’re thinking or feeling. Keep your attention on hanging onto your own sense of self and calming your anxieties. With time, you’ll reach a point where you can really relax while in full physical contact with your partner–even if they aren’t fully relaxed themselves.

In this exercise, there is no genital contact – in fact, there is nothing erotic here at all. It’s about relaxing during physical contact. It needs to be understood that sex is not an option at this point – it is off the table. As such, neither partner will read this as a prelude to sex, nothing more than what it is.

If you need to adjust your position to be more comfortable, feel free to tell your partner that’s what you’re doing and make the change you need to make to feel more physically comfortable. Apart from that, this exercise doesn’t include much talking.

It’s normal for anxieties and questions to come up in your mind. When they do, focus on soothing yourself. The more you are able to comfort and reassure yourself, the safer you make it for your partner to be physically and emotionally close to you.

How long should you hug? When do you stop? What if one person pulls away and the other wants to keep going? What if you’re usually the one initiating the hug?

Don’t try to negotiate answers to these questions with your partner; try to sort out what you respect in yourself, and do that. As difficult as it is to navigate these types of anxieties in a hug, it’s guaranteed to be more difficult to navigate them in sex.

Exercise 2: Heads on Pillows

Lie facing your partner, each with your head on your own pillow. Quiet your mind and heart and look into your partner’s eyes. If you want to include touch in this exercise, you can touch each other on the arm, face, or other non-erotic places. Notice what it feels like to let your partner really see into your heart through your eyes. Notice that you can block them from really seeing you, even while your eyes are open and looking into theirs. Notice whether you can see into their heart through their eyes.

Soothe any self consciousness, awkwardness, or anxiety you feel coming up. Keep your focus on soothing your own emotions in this exercise, not reassuring your partner or trying to get them to reassure you. Be kind to yourself in your self-talk.

Exercise 3: Feeling While Touching

Create a comfortable environment, with relaxing music and dim lights if you wish.

Sitting or lying next to your partner, touch a non-erotic part of their body while both of you mentally follow the point of physical contact between you as it moves. Move slowly. Try slow, deep breathing to see how that impacts your ability to really feel your partner. As you touch your partner, feel into their heart. Touch your partner with the intention of communicating love and gratitude through the quality of your touch.

Feeling while touching can eventually be expanded to include more body parts and less clothing, but it is essential that you expand on it very slowly and deliberately.

What I wish I Knew Before Marriage

You’re trying to manage the minds of lots of people, for you to be okay. And that’s a thankless job. It’s exhausting. - Jennifer Finlayson-Fife

Resentful Accommodation is neither kind or  loving

I entered my marriage with well-honed ability to accommodate my wife’s preferences. I thought I could use that ability to create a thriving relationship.

I was so wrong.

The more I accommodated my wife, the more I resented her. I tried to hid that resentment, but it still found ways to show itself. I felt like I didn’t have a choice in the way I showed up. I consistently blamed my wife for all of the dysfunction in our relationship, taking no personal responsibility for what was happening. We focused on raising our children, never talking about what was happening between use. We were both anxious around each other, avoided intimate conversation, and didn’t like to be alone together.

After many years of reinforcing this unpleasant pattern, I learned that I was doing something called “resentful accommodation.” I was overtly yielding to my wife’s demands, while internally resenting, resisting, and blaming her. I was pretending to be kind and loving, but on the inside there was neither kindness nor love.

I’ve been unwinding this pattern over the last few years, learning to be honest and courageous in my marriage. I still do lots of nice things for my wife, but I do them of my own accord, and with real love in my heart. My actions are no longer driven by fear of emotional intensity, and my heart is no longer full of resentment.

It has taken me years to make this change, and my wife has made similar changes on her side. As Jennifer would say, we are becoming more capable of love. It’s not an easy thing to do.

Relationships tend to be well-balanced

Romantic relationships almost always happen between two people at similar levels of emotional development. Once the relationship is established, both partners grow or stagnate together. If you think you are significantly more (or less) mature, kind, or loving than your partner, you probably aren’t.

We are blind to our own faults, and sensitive to the faults of others. This makes it look like your partner is the problem, when it’s really a 50/50 split. Your partner probably sees you more accurately than you see yourself, and vice-versa. You need a mirror to see your body, and you need another person to see your soul.

Relationships are hard because what you can see (your partner) is not what you can change (yourself.) The temptation to focus on your partner’s shortcomings (what you can see but can’t change) is the greatest obstacle to relationship repair.

The law of relationship balance means that when one partner grows, the other usually follows. Immaturity in one partner encourages and enables immaturity in the other. We all still get a choice, but the easiest way to grow up is to live with someone who is more grown up than you are.

Personal growth is the only way to improve a relationship.

The best way to help your partner grow is to focus on your own growth. Attempting to change your partner directly is a “shortcut” that doesn’t work, and it distracts you from your own growth. You need to grow out of behaviors and attitudes that enable and support your partner’s immaturity. Identifying and changing those enabling behaviors gets you out of your partner’s way.

Focus on your own growth because that’s where your power lies. Even if you think your partner is responsible for 80% of the difficulty in your relationship, your power still lies in the 20% you can actually change.

Love fuels growth in yourself and others, while resentment encourages stagnation. Love demands honesty, courage, and calm confrontation. Deception and coddling are not love.

Honest confrontation is part of growth. It’s hard to confront your partner, and even harder to confront yourself. Self-confrontation is more powerful than partner-confrontation. Self-confrontation in front of your partner is the fast lane to personal growth.

Differences in desire are  normal

There is usually a higher-desire partner (HDP) and lower-desire partner (LDP) for each area of a relationship. It’s common to see an HDP/LDP dynamic in the areas of sex, intimacy, communication, growth, and parenting, among others. It’s rare for one partner to be HDP in all areas.

The LDP has control over the thing they are lower-desire for. The frequency and intensity of sex, intimacy, and communication are determined by the LDP for each. The LDP for staying together determines how long the relationship lasts.

Higher-Desire Partners often use the thing they are higher-desire for as a way to extract validation from the LDP. Lower-desire partners often get a sense of self from resisting the HDP. An HDP who uses sex, communication, touch, or gifts as a source of validation is encouraging the LDP to offer less of those things.

Differences in sexual desire can be resolved if both partners become capable of more generous, giving, and abundant sexuality. This requires both the LDP and HDP to develop stronger, more generous desire. The HDP for sex must confront the urge to use sex as a source of validation, while the LDP confronts the urge to withhold sex as a form of punishment or control. There is often a good reason for the LDP to not want the kind of sex that is being offered.

Want help with your relationship?

I help couples build lasting, loving relationships. Book a free consultation here.

Parenting Without Emotional Punishment

“So much is asked of parents, and so little is given.”

 –Virginia Satir

Emotional Punishment is the default

Most parents use emotional punishment to control their children. The implicit contract is this: if you don’t do what I say, you have to deal with my unpleasant emotions. We don’t know that we’re doing this, it feels like emotional intensity is something that happens to us, not something we strategically deploy.

Ichiro Kishimi illustrates this dynamic in The Courage to Be Disliked:

One day, a mother and daughter were quarreling loudly. Then, suddenly, the telephone rang. “Hello?” The mother picked up the receiver hurriedly, her voice still thick with anger. The caller was her daughter’s homeroom teacher. As soon as the mother realized who was phoning, the tone of her voice changed and she became very polite. Then, for the next five minutes or so, she carried on a conversation in her best telephone voice. Once she hung up, in a moment, her expression changed again and she went straight back to yelling at her daughter.

Unlike children, most adults have the ability to limit the intensity of their emotional expression. When you get angry at your child, there is more intentionality there than you want to admit. We all experienced emotional manipulation from our own parents, so it seems normal to repeat the pattern with our own children.

Alternatives to emotional manipulation

Children get to choose whether they do what their parents want them to do. Previous generations relied on the threat of physical punishment to encourage children to obey. As society moves away from physical punishment, children are more likely to push back against their parents’ wishes.

Modern parents face a new challenge: how do we encourage children to obey without emotional or physical punishment? The short answer is this: overall, most children are likely to be somewhat less obedient without the threat of physical punishment. The long answer is this: parents have to put in more effort, be more creative, and hold onto their own emotions better.

Incentives and Consequences

If you don’t use physical or emotional punishment, you are left with incentives and consequences. Children respond best to incentives that take immediate effect, so parents learn to time-shift rewards so that children can see they’re making progress towards something appealing. The old-fashioned way of doing this is with a “star chart” or some other kind of point-tracking system. You can create a similar system on your phone by using one of the many “tally counter” apps that allow you to track various “tallies.” Each tally can be the number of “points” a child has earned by, for example, putting on their shoes and fastening their seat belts. You can have one tally for each child, and they can see you click + or  - depending on their behavior.

It’s important for children to feel that their parents are firmly in charge.

Childhood anxiety increases when children sense that there is no firm hand at the wheel in their family. Children crave order, structure, and a calm, loving container in which to learn and grow. On a subconscious level they actually want mom and dad to be in charge. Mom and dad also want to be in charge, because it means you can actually get the family in the car and go somewhere together. If you have three children, there is never a time when all three want to put their shoes on and get in the car at the same time. They also don’t want to eat at the same time, go to bed at the same time, or basically do anything at the same time. The family structure requires that someone be in charge.

Parents should operate within the actual limits of their authority

Parents who use emotional punishment are trying to artificially inflate their authority. Children actually get to choose whether they put their shoes on or not, and the parent’s job is to figure out a way to make that happen. Most children want to believe that their parents are in charge, and they will often test their parents’ resolve to see what the power structure actually looks like.

Emotional punishment increases bad behavior

Emotional punishment increases your child’s anxiety, which in turn increases bad behavior. Anxiety drives children to act out in a dozen different ways. Anxious siblings tend to argue or fight with each other. Children experiencing anxiety are less likely to comply with a parent’s requests. Conversely, parents who bring a sense of safety and calm can help their children be more compliant. Children can learn to follow a parent’s instructions as a matter of course. A child who used to associate “put your shoes on and get in the car” with extreme anxiety can learn to see it as no big deal.

Children have limited emotional capacity and rely on adults for soothing, external emotional regulation. When a parent adds their own anxiety into the dynamic, children are likely to act out or check out because their anxiety levels exceed what they can handle.

Emotionally safe parenting requires significant personal development

We don’t get the sudden ability to manage our own emotionality just because we had a kid. Parenting pushes us to become more capable of emotional regulation. Our children will always operate at a fraction of our own emotional skill level. It’s unreasonable to expect any child to exceed their parent’s emotional maturity, but that is exactly what we do when we ask our children to regulate their emotions more skillfully than we do ourselves.

Recommended Reading

Already Free by Bruce Tift

The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi

Three Things I learned from Bruce Tift

Bruce Tift’s book Already Free changed the way I think about life, love, and therapy. Bruce describes two paths to learning how to feel free in life:  the path of Western therapy, and the path of Buddhist philosophy. Bruce talks about how he has used ideas from both of those paths to help thousands of clients during his many decades of working as a therapist. I use Tift’s ideas in every therapy session and recommend the book to all of my clients. 

One:  emotional intensity is a leftover from childhood. 

My first operational assignment as an Air Force helicopter pilot was to a nuclear missile base in Montana. Within a few months of arriving at that base I had developed an unhealthy relationship with Captain Bradford (not his real name), one of the senior pilots in the squadron. He would find opportunities to degrade and belittle me, and I lived in constant fear of him. I would feel intense pain in my chest every time I saw his car in the parking lot. My anxiety interfered with my performance as a pilot, leading me to fall behind my peers. 

The emotional distress I experienced was not proportional to the situation I was living in. Captain Bradford’s bullying was actually quite mild, but I experienced it as a very real threat to my survival. The intense physical distress I experienced was a leftover from my childhood, when I depended on my parents for physical and emotional survival. In childhood, emotional intensity reflects how vulnerable and dependent we actually are. I felt just as vulnerable as a 27-year-old military officer because my brain had not learned to let go of the past. 

Two:  Emotional intensity happens in the body

I remember feeling intense pain in my chest when I saw my antagonist’s car in the parking lot, but I immediately interpreted that pain into a story about how he was probably waiting to belittle me in some way. I felt similar pain in my chest if my wife was angry at me, or in any number of situations that involved someone who mattered a lot to me or had authority over me. 

Bruce Tift helped me understand how anxiety and other unpleasant emotions are basically a physical experience. “I have a physical pain in my chest” is the most accurate way to describe what happened to me when I saw Captain Bradford’s car. My instinctive response was to try to get rid of that uncomfortable feeling by distracting myself, dissociating from my physical experience, or indulging in the idea that my physical distress was someone else’s fault. 

Tift recommends the opposite approach:  can you make room for your body to feel what it needs to feel? Can you extend kindness and sweet love to the distress in your body? This practice has transformed the way I interact with anxiety. I often think of my own children, and how I would care for them if they were experiencing similar physical pain. Instead of turning away from them, I would offer them physical and emotional comfort. I try to do the same for the (very young) part of me that experiences physical/emotional pain. 

Three:  Distress is a normal part of life

My physical indications of anxiety decreased significantly after I did EMDR and ART trauma therapy last year. I still feel distress, but it is a tiny fraction of what I used to feel. With Tift’s help, I’ve learned to embrace the emotional intensity that is just a part of who I am. I realize that when I start a new job, argue with my wife, or experience any kind of loss or failure in my life, my body is going to respond in the same way it always does. I will feel some kind of tightness and pain in my chest. In extreme cases I might start to shake physically for a few minutes. I’ve learned to greet these experiences like an old friend, knowing they don’t actually pose any threat to my wellbeing. My emotional intensity comes and goes, and life goes on. It’s part of what makes life a rich, interesting experience. I don’t feel the need to dissociate, distract, or remove myself from those feelings anymore. 

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Break Free from Emotional Manipulation

Infants use intense emotional expression (crying) to get their needs met. As adults we often resort to the same strategy:  using emotional intensity to manipulate others. This behavior is instinctive and hard to grow out of. 

Example 1

Brandon asks Jessica to have sex with him, and she turns him down.  Brandon responds by sulking for three hours. 

What’s going on here?

Brandon’s instinctive response is to use emotional intensity to try to control Jessica. This happens subconsciously, and Brandon doesn’t even know he’s doing it. He thinks his feelings just happen to him. 

What Happens Next?

Jessica tells Brandon “It seems like you sulked for a few hours after I turned you down yesterday. I think you’re trying to control me with your emotions.” At this point, Brandon can either double down on his strategy by responding with more emotional intensity, or he can take a look at himself and start to become more capable of having a mature adult relationship. 

Example 2

David asks Melissa to listen to an episode of his favorite relationship podcast. Melissa agrees but doesn't follow through. When David confronts her about it, Melissa gets angry. 

What’s going on here?

Melissa’s anger is a control mechanism that punishes David for confronting her, warns him not to do it again, and prevents them from discussing David’s concern. 

Melissa thinks that her anger is something that happens to her, not something she does. She doesn’t realize that she deploys anger to manipulate people all the time. 

What Happens Next?

David calms himself down, waits a few hours, and then confronts Melissa about her emotionality. She gets angry again, and he points out that she’s doing it again. Melissa gets up and leaves the room.

At this point, Melissa gets to make her own choice about how to behave in her relationship. There’s no reason for David to pursue the issue further; he’s already done everything he can. 

How do I stop using my emotions to manipulate others?

You can’t change what you can’t see. 

Most of us grew up believing that emotions are just something that happens to us, not something we do. As children, we used emotions to manipulate others because we didn’t have adult capacity for communication, self-calming, reasoning, and getting help. As adults, there are always better ways to get what we want. Emotional intensity is an effective tool for infants and toddlers, and an ineffective tool for adults. 

Feel more, act less. 

Children have limited emotional capacity, so they have to do something about their feelings rather than just feeling their feelings. Adults are capable of feeling all of the emotional intensity that life throws at us. That means we don’t have to do anything about it, we can just allow the body to feel what it needs to feel. 

Identify physical sensations. 

Every emotion has a physical sensation attached to it. When you feel an intense emotion, figure out where it shows up in your body. Usually these sensations are somewhere it the chest or abdomen. There might be tightness, heaviness, or even physical pain associated with your intense emotions. 

Practice kindness to physical sensations

As children, we learned to dissociate from physical sensations that were too intense to manage. As adults, we no longer need to dissociate because we can handle feeling whatever it is our body needs to feel. When you feel intense emotions, follow these steps: 

1. Where do you feel it in your body

2. Can it be OK for your body to feel what it is feeling?

3. Can you be kind to the uncomfortable sensation in your body?

These three steps help us move past our instinctive need to get rid of uncomfortable emotional/physical sensations. 

What do I do if someone is controlling me with their emotions? 

Emotional control is a two-player game. As children, we learned to yield to our parent’s use of emotional control mechanisms because we had very little power in the parent/child relationship. As adults, we have more power in our intimate relationships, but we still revert back to the parent/child dynamic when our partners use emotional control mechanisms against us. Just realize that you don’t have to be controlled by your partner’s emotions. If you can learn to feel what you need to feel, even when it’s uncomfortable, you can make choices based on your own wisdom, not on your fear of your partner’s emotional reactions. As a child, your parents’ emotional reactivity was actually a survival-level threat to you; you actually did need your parents to love you and care for you. As an adult, those things are not true. You can care for yourself, and you can even love yourself. We all want to have someone treat us well, but we don’t actually need that the way a child does. 

Recommended reading

Already Free by Bruce Tift 

The Courage to Be Disliked and The Courage to Be Happy by Ichiro Kishimi

Passionate Marriage by David Schnarch

❤️ 💪 Get more ideas for a happier relationship: Each week, I send out a newsletter with simple, practical tips for building strong, resilient relationships. Join here for free →

How to Tell your Partner what you Want

Most relationship arguments are about differences in preference and perception. If perception is Point A (where I am, where you are, where we are) then preference is Point B (where I want to be, where I want you to be, where I want us to be.) Point A is what I see, and Point B is what I want. 

It’s hard for two people to travel together when they disagree about the beginning and end points of their journey, but your relationship can still thrive if you learn how to clearly communicate how you perceive your own Point A and B. 

Examples of Point A communication (Sharing perception):

• I don’t think you have my best interest at heart right now

• I see the effort you are putting into our relationship

• I appreciate your honesty

• Thank you for doing the dishes

Examples of Point B communication (Sharing preference):

• Would you please do the dishes

• I want you to tell me the truth

• I want to get married

• I want to have a baby

• I want a divorce.

Communication is revealing yourself to your partner by sharing your perception and preference, and allowing your partner to do the same. Communication tends to be succinct and calm. 

Manipulation is trying to get your parter to agree with you. Manipulation tends to be longwinded and emotional. 

Most of what we call “relationship communication” is actually just manipulation. Your Point A and B will always differ from your partner’s Point A and B.  The goal of communication is to reveal where you stand, and allow your partner to do the same. Sometimes this will result in increasing agreement, and sometimes it won’t. 

Healthy Relationship Conflict

7 examples of healthy relationship conflict

Healthy conflict is good for relationships, and most relationships actually need more conflict, not less. We avoid conflict because we are afraid of upsetting each other, but the conflict ends up happening anyway, in more harmful ways. Here are seven examples of healthy relationship conflict:

1. Focus on perception and preference. Your perception is how you see yourself and your partner. Your preference is what you want your partner to do. You and your partner will always have different perceptions and preferences. As your relationship heals, these differences will shrink, but they will never disappear entirely. They just won’t be a problem anymore.

2. “I don’t think you have my best interest at heart.” This is an example of clearly stating a personal perception. Your partner will probably disagree with it, and that’s OK. The point is to be honest about how you see things, and then allow your partner to disagree if they do disagree. Healthy conflict is about allowing disagreement to exist peacefully.

3. “I prefer you use a kinder tone with me.” This is an example of clearly stating your preference without trying to force compliance. Preferences are powerful because no one else gets to define them for you. This only works if you can stay calm when your partner doesn’t comply with your wishes. Emotional intensity is often a form of manipulation.

4. “I understand and I disagree” is a way of clearing the ground between listening and agreeing. “You’re not hearing me” usually means “you don’t agree with me and I can’t handle it.”

5. “I don’t need you to agree with me” is a way to remind your partner that they get to have their own perceptions and preferences. Once you’ve shared your own preferences and perception, it’s wise to avoid trying to bring your partner around to seeing things the way you do.

6. Avoid appeals to outside authority.  Your preferences matter because you matter. You don’t need to buttress them with what “should” be happening. Take ownership of what you see and what you want. “This is what I want” is a stronger position than “this is how things should be.”

7. Focus on the future, not the past. Your partner remembers the past differently than you do, and that’s OK. Figure out what you want in the future, ask for it, and allow your partner to say no if that’s what they want to say.

What Drives Low Self-Esteem?

Reason #1:  because you’re human

We live in a culture that expects everyone to have “healthy self-esteem,” but in reality, self-esteem (or self-respect, as I prefer to call it) is something we develop, not something that comes naturally. As a rule, children are not really capable of self-esteem. Instead, they harvest their sense of self-worth from those around them. Children who grow up in a validating, supportive loving atmosphere tend to see themselves compassionately. Children who grow up surrounded by criticism, neglect, or abuse often see themselves in a negative light. Children are external references, meaning their self-respect is extracted from others. As we grow into adulthood external referencing becomes deeply unsatisfying to us and we have to make the shift to internal referencing. It’s much easier to reach physical adulthood than it is to reach emotional adulthood.

Reason #2:  because you’re working on it

Self-respect is something we build, not something we are born with. As an adult, you are probably already building your self-respect by becoming the kind of person you want to be, and avoiding the temptation of trying to become the kind of person someone else wants you to be. This process is much more a journey than a destination. In our early years our self-esteem is necessarily based on what others think of us. As we age, we find a way to fit into societal structures:  school, church, work, family. These structures offer us validation, but even this is only a temporary solution. As we enter the second half of life, our ability to derive satisfaction from meeting the expectations of others diminishes rapidly. When you meet an older person, you can tell instantly whether they have moved on from trying to meet the expectations of others. If they have, they carry a quiet sense of satisfaction. If not, they seem constantly on edge, always searching for that next hit of external validation. 

Reason # 3:  you lack courage

Courage was once considered the most important virtue, but that attitude is rare in modern society. Instead, we normalize adults shrinking in fear of the most mundane threats. Self-respect and courage are deeply linked. To be clear, courage is not the absence of fear, but the ability to take right action despite fear. In other words, courage is the ability to act in accordance with your values even when you are experiencing emotional distress. 

The practice of somatic acceptance can help increase courage. Underneath each emotion there is a physical sensation. “Dark” emotions like shame, embarrassment, and fear have unpleasant sensations associated with them. Cowardly actions are usually taken to get rid of these unpleasant sensations. Somatic acceptance is the practice of noticing an unpleasant sensation, making room for it in the body, and then allowing it to stay. Every time you do this, your estimation of your ability to feel intense things increases, and eventually you realize that as an adult, you are actually capable of feeling all of the intensity that your body might throw at you. 

Reason #4:  you’re trying to extract it from others

We talked about this a bit in the first section, but it’s worth revisiting here. Most of the ways we go about extracting validation from others involve some kind of deception, trickery, or manipulation. All of those behavioral patterns lead to lower self-esteem. There is a pattern that looks like this:

Deception drives external referencing and external referencing drives deception, creating a vicious cycle:

1. You deceive others to extract validation from them

2. Deception decreases self-respect

3. Decreased self-respect increases your need for external validation

4. Rinse and repeat

Honesty drives internal referencing and internal referencing drives honesty, creating a virtuous cycle:

1. You present yourself honestly to others, even if it’s not pretty

2. Honesty increases self-respect

3. Increased self-respect decreases your need for external validation

4. Rinse and repeat

In the end, everyone has to earn their own self-respect. There is a common cultural understanding that you can learn to like yourself, but that’s only true to the extent that you are living in a way that you respect. We can fool some people some of the time, but we can’t ever really fool ourselves. 

Why you partner might not want sex

Reason #1:  you’re in a committed relationship. 

It really is normal to have a higher-desire partner (HDP) and a lower-desire partner (LDP) in a committed sexual relationship. You’re probably the HDP, and you probably have a lot of cultural support for the idea that your partner is the one with the problem. 

Even though it’s normal for one partner to want less sex, relationships are more fun when there is less discrepancy in desire. Let’s make that happen by looking at. . .

Reason #2:  you’re using sex to extract validation. 

Validation is the sense that you’re good enough and it’s ok for you to be here. Understanding validation is the key to understanding sex, relationships, and human interaction in general. The key to creating a long-lasting sexual relationship is to make the switch from childhood validation (external referencing) to adult validation (internal referencing). 

In childhood, validation comes from others. Children are good at absorbing validation from others, and not good at validating themselves. Children are external referencers. 

Adult validation comes from within. As adults, we lose the ability to absorb validation from others, forcing us to earn our own self-respect or live in a constant state of invalidation. Adults have to become internal referencers if they want to enjoy committed relationships. 

The switch from external to internal referencing requires dedicated, deliberate effort. Most adults continue pursuing validation in childlike ways, hoping it will work next time even though it didn’t work last time. It’s really quite hard to undo the programming your brain received in childhood, replacing it with behavioral patterns that work well in adulthood. 

Higher-desire partners often use sex to extract validation. Have you ever felt slightly let down after sex? That’s your subconscious informing you that your attempt to extract validation didn’t work very well. Let’s figure out how to fix that by looking at. . .

Reason #3:  the way you use sex makes it hard for your partner to desire you

Humans are hard-wired to avoid validation traps (situations where you feel pressured to bolster someone’s self-esteem.) Think about the last time someone tried to extract approval or validation from you:  do you remember feeling a bit of disgust? That “cringe” of disgust is completely incompatible with sexual desire. That’s what your partner feels when you try to use sex to extract validation. 

Lets’ take a step back here before you start cursing my name:  repairing differences in sexual desire is a two-player game, and the lower-desire partner has plenty of work to do as well. I’m zeroing in on the HDP here because I’m guessing that’s who’s reading this article. Don’t worry, it’s not all your fault! Learn more about the LDP’s role in this dynamic by exploring . . .

Reason #4:  cultural meanings attached to sex make it hard to nurture desire in committed relationships. 

Everyone grows up with unhelpful meanings attached to sex, stemming from societal efforts to regulate sexuality and general anxiety about sex. Here are some unhelpful cultural ideas you might have been exposed to:

• The LDP should “care for” the HDP by having sex

• A man who doesn’t want sex isn’t a “real man”

• Sex is gross, bad, scary, or so amazing it has to be kept hidden and restricted

• Sexual difficulties are the LDP’s fault

• Sexual desire arises naturally as soon as emotional concerns are resolved

Reason #5:  your relationship is going through a natural process of growth and development

Sexual desire problems are part of the normal course of relationship progression. Desire, and the lack of desire, pressure us to become more capable of honesty, love, courage, kindness, and understanding, because that is the only way to create an environment where desire can flourish and thrive. If that sounds like a lot of work, well, it is. 

Sexual desire in long-term relationships is a delicate flower being choked by weeds, parched for lack of water, and starved for lack of nourishment. Given proper care, you can create a sexual relationship that put one-night stands to shame. This requires emotional growth and development, commitment, and education. 

How to Reduce Relationship Anxiety

Popular culture teaches us that relationships are for comfort and pleasure. Real life disagrees.

Most committed relationships are full of anxiety. As humans, we have a deep desire to form long-term relationships, but once we have established those relationships we have no idea how to make them places of comfort and pleasure. Instead, they become nests of anxiety.

1. Practice Somatic Kindness

When you feel anxiety, see if you can identify where you feel it in your body. The things we call emotions are just interpretations of physical sensations, usually located in our chest or abdomen. My anxiety usually feels like pain and tightness in my chest. By focusing on the physical sensation instead of the emotion, we turn our attention to what is most real in the moment.

Once you have identified what you feel in your body, practice directing a string of acceptance, kindness, and love to that uncomfortable sensation. This is a counter-instinctive practice because we learned early in childhood to distract, dissociate, or tune out uncomfortable sensations in the body. As adults, our capacity for feeling intense sensations is much greater than what it was when we were children, but we still distract and dissociate because that is what we are used to doing.

I use the mantra feel more, do less to describe the practice of opening my heart to uncomfortable sensations.

2. Learn to self-validate

Most relationship anxiety is a byproduct of validation-seeking behavior. Validation (the feeling that you’re good enough and it’s OK for you to be here) is a constant undercurrent in any relationship. As children, we all depended on others for validation. As adults, we have to learn how to feel good about ourselves without relying on the approval of others.

This shift from external to internal referencing is critical to the survival of any romantic relationship. Children are external referencers by nature — they aren’t capable of self-validation. Adults are not only capable of external validation, it’s the only kind of validation that actually works in adulthood.

I can remember times in my childhood when I my parents displayed approval of something I was doing, and it felt like molten sunshine pouring into my soul. That same feeling doesn’t come in adulthood, at least not from external sources. In order to really feel good about who we are as adults, we have to actually earn our own self-respect.

3. Make room for disagreement

Trying to get your partner to agree with you is one way of seeking external validation. It’s common for two people in a relationship to have different memories of the same event. If unkind feelings are involved, memories of past events will change to support the way you feel at the moment of remembering.

You make room for disagreement by allowing your partner to have their own memories, opinions, perceptions, and preferences. When those don’t match up with yours, it gives you an opportunity to practice self-validation and internal referencing.

4. Breathe Together

Intentional breathing is an easy way to calm the body and the soul. Breathing in sync with your partner gives you both the experience of feeling safe and being together at the same time, something that might not happen very often in a challenging relationship. You can use any number of apps or recordings to help time your inhalation and exhalation, or you can just listen to each other breathing and figure out a way to stay in sync.

Intentional breathing sends an “all clear” message to the brain that can counteract built-up sensations of anxiety, fear, uncertainty, and unsafety. These effects multiply when two people breathe together.