Sections
ALL THE MEDICINES ARE LOVE IN ACTION, AND ALL THE MEDICINES ARE WHAT BUILD THE ALMIGHTY PRE-REQUISITE FOR HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP: TRUST.
THE TRUTH:
The truth is sometimes scary and hard. This is why denial can be very easy to partake in. But the truth is - it really will set us free. The only way a couple can find their way back to one another is by facing the truth, the only way you will succeed in all the ways you wish to succeed in, is by confronting the truth. Accountability lives here. We cannot even see the truth before we are willing to be accountable.
Its at times brutal to confront the truth in our own feelings, let alone here it from someone else. But it is only then that real, long lasting healing can occur. Whenever you are willing to look at the truth of any given situation, problem, feeling, and fear, you are in fact showering yourself and your relationships with medicine.
Principles of The Truth in relationship:
Tell the truth. Always. To yourself and to your partner. Even if it hurts.
You can be kind and truthful. Be both
Don’t sweep your feelings or your partners feelings under the rug
Don’t pretend that everything is ok when it is not.
Don't melodramatize and make things worse than they are.
Feel your feelings
EMPATHY:
To be able to step out of your head and into the heart of your lover is one of the most vital skills to being in an intimate long term relationship. Its impossible to have compassion without first having empathy, which is why empathy is the ultimate medicine. It is also extremely difficult to remember and honor the fact that your partners experience of life - the lens through which he/she sees everyone and everything is not the same as your lens. This is why all too often I hear couples say: “I would never do that” or “that just doesn't make sense to me”, or they simply obsess about how something effects themselves, and rarely think about how it impacts their lover.
Principles of Empathy inside of a relationship:
Heartfelt understanding: When we become more empathetic, we are then able to feel our partner from our heart, not just understand them from our mind.
Ask your partner questions about their experience of any given situation more often.
Listen, withholding judgement. and imagine what it would feel like to be him or her in that moment
like a researcher, get to know all that you can about you partners past and childhood.
ask questions such as: “What was that like?” “How did you do ___?” “What happened when?”
The more insight you have into your partner’s history: parents, upbringing, and major life events, the more you will be able to see the world through their eyes and feel less threatened when you do not see eye to eye on a situation.
VULNERABILITY:
This is literally our super power as women and sadly, it’s gravely misunderstood. No doubt, it is not ideal to feel physically vulnerable when we need our health and bodily strength to feel good. But emotional vulnerability is not the same thing as psychological weakness, even though they are often referred to interchangeably.
Feeling hard, tense, overprotective, and stressed out in your relationship are all clues that you are struggling with your vulnerability - and this may very well be the case if you feel hurt by your partner. As a woman, you need to be feel safe to be able to open and receive. You need feel cherished by your lover in order to let go and be raw and real.
**If you’re struggling right now in your relationship, you most likely don’t feel cherished. Instead, you likely feel misunderstood and as a result, you’ve been starting to close. If I’m describing you, please go through this entire blueprint, plus the communication and self acceptance blueprints which you can access easily inside the membership. They will all help you navigate your relationship better and bring you back to homeostasis - whatever that may be.
Here are some ways to shed some of the armor and resurrect your strength in vulnerability:
Breathe. A raw, authentic vulnerable state is one where you are breathing. Just remember that when we close, our breaths become shallow and narrow. Take deeper, fuller, wider breaths throughout the day. Feel your inhalation go down your lungs and fill your belly and lower back, and as you exhale soften your skin, jaw, neck and shoulders.
Move your body. Yoga is brilliant for this, but so is a long walk, a workout at the gym, or hardcore cardio.
Practice sharing your fears. Particularly if you’re someone who tries to project a strong, fearless woman, practicing sharing your deeper fears with your loved one. It will free you, and it will help others know you better. *for more on this, do the Self-Acceptance Blueprint inside the membership
Admit when something hurts your feelings. This is very simple: Instead of getting angry, or hiding and fighting back tears, or shutting down, say, “That really hurt my feelings”. Say it free of anger and force. Say it as if it is genuinely ok to be hurt and admit it.
Practice sharing more about you. Your dreams, wishes, needs, and your past. Being vulnerable requires that you share more of you. I firmly believe that no one has to share every crevice of their psychology to their partner. However, if you hold your cards very close to your chest for fear of being found out, unseen, or not enough, do the Self-Acceptance Blueprint, and then continue to practice opening up.
APPRECIATION:
There is one pattern that I see in 100 percent of all the couples that I have worked with: A lack of genuine appreciation of one another. Both women and men need to feel appreciated, but you must know that men need this disproportionately more frequently. *I will delve deeper into this later in the section, “Understanding Men”.
That being said, no matter who you are or who you love, we all need to feel appreciated for who we are, what we do, and how we contribute to the relationship. Saying: “thank you” is a beautiful way to start appreciating your partner, and highly underestimated. There are other more targeted ways to start appreciating more:
Start appreciating yourself more. You need your own appreciation much more than you give yourself. This makes it more natural and easeful to be able to extend it to your partner.
Reflect often on all the ways you appreciate your partner. It’s important that you feel appreciation so that when you share it verbally, its real.
Every day tell your partner you appreciate him/her and share WHY. Do this, and watch what happens. It is often miraculous.
When you witness your partner try to give you what you have asked for - even if it’s not perfect, greatly reward him or her with your appreciation. One of the worst habits I see in couples is when one or both are being hard asses when they don’t get what they want exactly how they want it, and they neglect to acknowledge genuine effort to change.
PRESENCE:
The biggest complaint I get from the women I work with is that they don't feel their significant other’s presence. As a woman, you need this. But your lover - man or woman, needs your presence too.
Total attentiveness is presence. It’s energetic. Someone could be in the same room as you - even looking at you, but you just feel that they're somewhere else. We are all guilty of this. Life can be overwhelming and it can be hard to show up fully for someone else. But a consistent lack of presence is extremely toxic to a relationship, which is why being present is powerful medicine.
Our attention is our greatest currency. It is the largest gift we can bestow onto our partner. Its one thing to be stressed once and while and frenetic with our energy, unable to truly listen. It is quite another thing to always meet our partner with that state. Communication aside, it is very unsettling to be spending passive time with your partner (ie, watching a movie together, reading a book together, or taking a quiet walk together) and know that they are stuck in another world. This blocks intimacy.