Fighting for Connection - Creating a Secure Marriage
Want a close connected and secure relationship? Maybe you feel like something's not quite right in your relationship, even though there are a lot of good things. You and your partner love each other, but there are moments that hurt. It's normal for all relationships to experience conflict or worry. The difference between the couples that remain close and the couples that drift apart is their ability to work through conflict and moments of worry and insecurity within the relationship.
Listen in to discover new ways to stay close and connected even through the toughest moments life throws at you.. Learn how to deal with your patterns of conflict and make your connection stronger. Simply listen, learn, make changes, and see positive transformations in your relationship.
Brett Nikula is an LMFT and Relationship coach that works with couples that want to stay together, that really care about each other, learn to communicate in a way that reduces the pain in the relationship and increases the connection.
Fighting for Connection - Creating a Secure Marriage
One Simple Tool for Regulation in your Relationship
This week, I, Brett Nikula, open up about the challenges that come with juggling the professional aspects and my personal life. It's a familiar struggle many of us face, and in this episode, I take it a step further by sharing not just stories but also practical tools for maintaining emotional steadiness and cultivating stronger connections with those we hold dear.
As we navigate the complexities of responding to an upset spouse, I walk you through a transformative four-step exercise that's more than just a discussion—it's a blueprint for personal growth within your relationships. This isn't about merely weathering the emotional storms; it's about learning to communicate with clarity, regulate our reactions, and most importantly, support ourselves through it all. Join me in this heartfelt exploration of emotional regulation and relationship communication, where every listener walks away with strategies to enhance understanding and deepen their emotional ties.
Episode number 82,. One Simple Tool to Stay Regulated. Hello and welcome to the Fighting for Connection podcast. I'm Brett Niccolo, a husband, father and fun lover. Listen in as I share stories, tips and inspiration that will move you toward the connection that you want in your relationship.
Speaker 1:Hello everybody, I hope you are all well and staying healthy. It seems like so many of the people that I've talked to, including myself and my family, have been affected by one bug or another. It just seems to be that time of year when things are going around. Our kids are on spring break and, thankfully, everyone seems to be healthy, so that is good. Next week we plan to head down to Florida. So our kids they're going to have a week off for spring break. They're going to go back to school for two days and then they're going to have five days off of school, so they're pretty lucky in that way. I think and I'm hoping that we got all the bugs worked out and that everyone is healthy. For our time down in Florida, I'm really looking to just unplugging and relaxing and unwinding with all of my kids and just playing with them in the sand and having a good time.
Speaker 1:Here at Pivotal Approach, I continue to stay busy meeting with my one-to-one clients. I still mostly see and work with therapy clients, but I'm really working to make some pretty big changes to the coaching side and I'm excited about what I'm going to be rolling out there In my business within Pivotal Approach. It took some time to really figure out my spot in the therapy world. I started by working with kids. I kind of pivoted to working with men and then parents and all kinds of different things in my journey to really where I am now. If you've been following with me since the beginning along my Instagram page, many of you probably have seen the many iterations of my business since I opened and it feels like now in my therapy I've found a home here in Buffalo working with the population that I do. I get a lot of referrals nowadays and I have a certain clientele that I work with and I communicate to on my website and it just feels like I've kind of found a niche within the therapy world. On the coaching side, it seems like I'm still trying to find that same home, that niche that feels right. But the changes that are in the works are things that I'm really excited about and I believe it's going to really propel the coaching side of my business forward, and the changes are going to still remain in, like the marriage niche, but how I help those marriages and how I communicate and what I do on the coaching side is going to change. I'm excited about that.
Speaker 1:And these iterations, these pivots, these moves in our business is really what we all have to do in our life. When we're figuring out things. There's really a process of trying something, learning or taking an approach at something, applying it, assessing how our application is being responded to, if it's doing what we want it to, if it's having the impact that we're hoping it does, if it's having the success that we're hoping it does. If it's not accomplishing those things, we have to research a new way to do what we're hoping to do and then we have to restart. So we have to figure something out, have a hypothesis, then we have to apply that hypothesis. We have to assess how that hypothesis is working. We have to research a new hypothesis and then we have to restart. And that's really what I'm doing on the coaching side and it's really a work that requires a lot of my own personal work. Right, it's easy to get discouraged, it's easy to get burnt out, but we have to learn how to manage ourselves so we can continue on this process and we can really accomplish the things that I believe are possible for this coaching business to accomplish. I just have to simply do my part of applying this formula, which is hypothesis, apply, assess, research and restart.
Speaker 1:Today I have just a few minutes to record this podcast, so again, it's going to be nice and short for you all, and I wanted to share with you all a little tool or exercise that you can do that will really help you stay regulated when there's emotions in play. So many people that I talk to they want to improve their relationship, they want to have healthier communication, but I think a trap that we all get into is that we tend to just consume content. You know, we listen to the podcast or read the books. We even go and work with a coach or we go to therapy. But you know, something that I think is so underrated is the application of what we're learning about. So often we don't apply and we don't practice the things that we're being taught in the books that we're reading, or the podcasts that we're listening to, or the therapy that we're experiencing or the coaching that we're experiencing. We listen, our brain feels really good because it's like, oh, yeah, that makes sense, or yeah, that seems like that will work, and we get this sense of hope. This little dopamine hit, but then we don't do anything with it.
Speaker 1:And I like to tell my clients at the end of our sessions, when we've talked about something or we've learned a new skill or something like that, that they've completed part one and that's attending the session. Now go out and complete part two, which is the application and the practicing of what we learned or talked about. And here is really a tangible exercise that you can do that goes beyond just listening to a podcast or learning something and just kind of having it bounce around in your brain. This is an exercise and a tool that you can use and utilize and you can do after this podcast is done, and it will help you apply this to your life and your relationships and it will help you practice these things and give you a way to integrate it into your life, versus listening to it and having it bounce around your brain and nothing happens with it. So grab a pen, a piece of paper and I want you to write these things down. It's so incredible when we try to speak what is in our mind or we try to write down what's in our mind, how unformed those thoughts that are in our mind really actually are.
Speaker 1:One of the tools that I teach to really every couple that I work with is the conflict cycle, and so many times my couples will be like I totally get it, it totally makes sense and I'm like awesome, teach it to me. And it's like crickets. They get it, they understand it, but they don't know how to teach it. They don't know how to communicate it, and that's why I think this is so important that we actually get a piece of paper, we get a pen and we do this. So first thing I want you to write down is how you want to respond when your spouse is upset, and I want you to use emotion words like I want to respond in a caring way, I want to respond in a respectful way, I want to respond in an attuned way or in a compassionate way or whatever it is that you want to do. Those are just words that I'm throwing out there, but just sit down and consider how you want to respond to your spouse when they are upset, then what I want you to do as a part of this is I want you to write down what actions you would take that align with those emotions that you wrote down. So if you want to respond in a caring way, maybe you would move close to them, you would give them a hug, you would listen and put your phone down and engage with them.
Speaker 1:I have a podcast on that Listening to Connect where you listen to what they're saying, you repeat back to them what they've said. You try, on the emotion that was communicated, you let them know what that emotion would be like within you. You ask them if that's how that emotion is within them and then you communicate to them what you hope that they would experience in the relationship with you. And these are the actions that we can take from these emotions. So that's really the first thing I want you to do is, just, in a perfect world, when your spouse is upset, how would you want to respond to them? What emotion would you like to communicate to them and what actions would come from those emotions?
Speaker 1:Number two I want you to write down how you currently respond, especially like. I want you to think of, like the times that you respond in the worst ways. Write down what emotions you have and what actions you take Currently when things aren't going well, when you're responding in the way that you hoped you wouldn't. What emotions do you have and what actions are you taking? So it might be like, frustrated, I yell. Write those things down in as much detail as you can.
Speaker 1:Number three I want you to write down what you can do so that you can show up in the way that you want to, right? What can you do so that you can show up in the way that you wrote down under number one, right? How do you want to respond when your spouse is upset? What can you do so you can show up in that way? It might be like taking some time to process what they've said, sometimes like writing down what they said and reading it allows for you to respond in a more regulated way Regulating yourself, working with a coach or a therapist. Figure out a plan that you can do so you can show up in a way that aligns with number one.
Speaker 1:And then number four what can you do so that you can have your own back? And this is really important, because sometimes your spouse will be like you're not caring, and I want you to be able to have your own back. So write down what you can do so that you can have your own back, so that you can either number one, know that you're caring. Okay, that's so important because oftentimes your spouse is confused, right? They feel like you don't care and you really do. So. Don't let them dysregulate you. Right? How can you have your own back so that they can say you don't care about me and you can just care for them? Right, you don't have to defend yourself, you don't have to explain yourself, you don't have to get frustrated and upset and defeated. You can just stay there and be caring and come up with a plan so that you can have your own back.
Speaker 1:With this also comes this piece where you can have your own back even when you aren't doing what you want to be doing. And what this looks like is your spouse says you're not caring and you can kind of have your own back. You can assess yourself. You can say you know what. You're right. What I was doing, right, there wasn't very caring and that's not who I want to be. You're right, what I was doing, right there wasn't very caring and that's not who I want to be. That's not how I want to show up and I can understand why you felt the way that you did or why you saw what you saw and why you're communicating this to me. It's so important that we can have our own back so that we can either know that we're caring when they say that we're not caring, or we can also communicate to them that we agree with them, that we weren't very caring there and it's not the way that we want to show up and that's really having our own back to it. It's saying yep, I'm with you, I wasn't showing up the way that I wanted to. That's a big skill to learn.
Speaker 1:Write these four things down, come up with a plan, especially in those three and four questions. Come up with a plan, apply that plan and see if you can get to number one and see if you can get rid of number two. And the things that you can do really are learn new skills. You can work with a coach. You can work with a therapist. You can read some books, do some workbooks. You can come up with a plan and then apply that plan to see if you can get to number one. And going back to, like this hypothesis application, assess research and restart. That is what we're going to do here. We're just going to figure out what we have to do so we can respond in the way that we want to when our spouse is upset.
Speaker 1:This exercise is so important because it allows for us to have a roadmap in our mind for the next time that our spouse is upset, whether your spouse is upset with you, with the kids, with their life or whatever it might be. You can also use the same process to write down how you want to respond when you are upset, instead of how do you want to respond when your spouse is upset? How do you want to respond when you're upset? How do you currently respond when you're upset? What can you do so that you can show up in the way that you want to when you're upset, and what can you do so you can have your own back when you're upset? It can work in this same way when we're trying to work on ourself, independently of our spouse's upset. Having clarity around these relationship goals can give you a focus, and it can also provide feedback as to where we still need to grow or we're still misaligned with who we want to be.
Speaker 1:When we have clarity around who we want to be. We can communicate so much more clearly and we can stay so much more regulated. We can hold space for our spouse and we can own the pieces that we agree with our spouse. Like, if they say we're not caring, we can be like, yeah, and we weren't able to show up caring in that moment and that's true. Now we can have our own back and understand why. What was going on for us? Right, we can learn that piece of it and we can work on that piece of it and we can say that that's something that I'm really working on, because you're so important to me and I don't to continue to show up in these uncaring ways.
Speaker 1:All of that kind of communication can come when we create goals. We have clarity around these goals, we're practicing these goals, we're trying to achieve these goals within our relationship and it's really the things that we can do that are concrete, that are applicable to our relationship, so that we can get to a healthier dynamic within the relationship. Again, healthy relationships aren't measured if we're happy. They're measured with our ability to reassure each other when there's confusion in the relationship, and that allows for us to work through these moments of confusion, these moments of conflict, these moments of hurt that happen in every relationship, so that we can reconnect, so that we can repair and so that we can bond, even when there's challenges within the relationship.
Speaker 1:Give that a try. But, more than anything, start practicing new skills in your relationship. It really takes practice. It's going to be awkward and it's going to be hard at first, but stick with it. If you've never shot a basketball, going out and shooting a basketball for the first time isn't going to look pretty, but if you continue to shoot it and you continue to shoot it, you don't really need to like read a book. You just continue to do it and you'll become more natural at that. And that's what we want to do in our relationship. Go out there, practice, you know research, apply, restart, do it again and really see if you can be the change you need in your relationship. Have a great week, everybody. Talk to you next week. Bye-bye, this has been the Fighting for Connection podcast. If you've enjoyed this podcast and want more content like this, check out my Connected Couples Campus, which can be found on my website, wwwpivotalapproachcom, and become the difference you need in your relationship.
