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The Spirit of Gratitude

11/19/2016

Finding Gratitude.
Here’s what you do.
At night, when you’re lying in bed in the dark, just before you go off to sleep…
close your eyes and whisper quietly to yourself or in your mind,
all the things you are grateful for that have happened that day or that are occurring in your life at the moment. Even if you can only come up with one thing – it’s something!

The more you do it, the easier it becomes – like any habit.
After a while you will be amazed at all the good that is in your life.
And guess what?
You will attract more by being in this frame of mind.
What you focus on you attract.

“Be thankful for what you have; you’ll end up having more. If you concentrate on what you don’t have, you will never, ever have enough.” Oprah Winfrey

You can also do this in a Gratitude Journal.
Buy a beautiful journal and write in it regularly.
When you’re having a bad day have a look through your Journal and
it will trigger your good feelings and you may be surprised what beauty comes from your words.

When I feel low and heavy with anxiety of the future
or frustrated from my day,
I go back to the basics.

Here are some things I am grateful for at the moment:
I’m healthy.
I’m loved.
I have enough money for food.
I have somewhere clean, warm and safe to live.
I have wonderful supportive friends and family.
I am able to see, hear and walk. I am able to travel.
I can walk in nature and be in awe of its simplicity
and power. I have the power to choose happiness and define it for myself. I live in a beautiful country.
I am free to choose.

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What are Your Emotional Needs in a Marriage?

11/13/2016

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His Needs Her Needs:
10 Emotional Needs in Marriages
What are yours?

1. Affection: Showing love through words, cards, gifts, hugs, kisses, and courtesies; creating an environment that clearly and repeatedly expresses love.
2. Sexual Fulfillment: A sexual relationship that brings out a predictably enjoyable sexual response in both of you that is frequent enough for both of you.
3. Conversation: Talking about events of the day, feelings, and plans; avoiding angry or judgmental statements or dwelling on past mistakes; showing interest in your favorite topics of conversation; balancing conversation; using it to inform, investigate, and understand you; and giving you undivided attention.
4. Recreational Companionship: Developing interest in your favorite recreational activities, learning to be proficient in them, and joining you in those activities. If any prove to be unpleasant to your spouse after an effort has been made, negotiating new recreational activities that are mutually enjoyable.
5. Honesty & Openness: Revealing positive and negative feelings, events of the past, daily events and schedule, plans for the future; not leaving you with a false impression; answering your questions truthfully.
6. Attractiveness of Spouse: Keeping physically fit with diet and exercise; wearing hair, clothing, and in a way that you find attractive and tasteful.
7. Financial Support: Provision of the financial resources to house, feed, and clothe your family at a standard of living acceptable to you, but avoiding travel and working hours that are unacceptable to you.
8. Domestic Support: Creation of a home environment for you that offers a refuge from the stress of life; managing the home and care of the children- if any are at home – including but not limited to cooking meals, washing dishes, washing and ironing clothes, and housecleaning.
9. Family Commitment: Scheduling sufficient time and energy for the moral and educational development of your children; reading to them, taking them on frequent outings, educating himself or herself in appropriate child-training methods and discussing those methods with you; avoiding and child-training method or disciplinary action that does not have your enthusiastic support.
10. Admiration: Respecting, valuing, and appreciating you; rarely critical; and expressing admiration to you clearly and often.

HER Top 5 Emotional Needs (on average):
1. Affection
2. Conversation
3. Honesty & Openness
4. Financial Support
5. Family Commitment

HIS Top 5 Emotional Needs (on average):
1. Sexual Fulfillment
2. Recreational Companionship
3. Attractiveness of Spouse
4. Domestic Support
5. Admiration

All information adapted from Dr. Willard Harley Jr.’s book,
His Needs Her Needs: Building an Affair-Proof Marriage (Fleming H. Revell: 2001)

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Am I in a Codependent Relationship?

11/6/2016

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Codependency can be defined as any relationship in which two people
become so invested in each other that
they can’t function independently anymore.

Your mood, happiness, and identity are defined by the other person.
In a codependent relationship, there is usually one person who is more passive and can’t make decisions for themselves, and a more dominant personality
who gets some reward and satisfaction from controlling the other person
and making decisions about how they will live.

Codependency becomes problematic when one person is taking
advantage of the other financially or emotionally.

Enabling is a sign of an unhealthy codependence.
Mary-Catherine Segota, PsyD, a clinical psychologist at Counseling Resource Services in Winter Garden, Florida, describes enabling as a behavior that's used to
ease relationship tension caused by one partner’s problematic habits.

Enabling behavior, which is rarely seen in healthy relationships, includes bailing your partner out, repeatedly giving him or her another chance, ignoring the problem, accepting excuses, always being the one trying to fix the problem,
or constantly coming to the rescue.

Codependent personalities usually follow a pattern of behaviors that are consistent, problematic, and directly interfere with the individual’s emotional health and ability to find fulfillment in a relationship.

“Signs of codependency include excessive caretaking,
controlling, and preoccupation with people and things outside of ourselves,”
says Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse, a consultant, educator,
and author of numerous books, including Understanding Codependency.

Signs of codependency include:

Having difficulty making decisions in a relationship
Having difficulty identifying your feelings
Having difficulty communicating in a relationship
Valuing the approval of others more than valuing yourself
Lacking trust in yourself and having poor self-esteem
Having fears of abandonment or an obsessive need for approval
Having an unhealthy dependence on relationships, even at your own cost
Having an exaggerated sense of responsibility for the actions of others

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Emotional Dependency is Not Immature or Pathological, It Is Our Greatest Strength.

11/1/2016

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It is secure attachment, what Nature set us up for,
that makes love persist.
Trust helps us over the rough places that crop up in every relationship.
Moreover, our bodies are designed to produce a slew of chemicals
that bond us tightly to our loved ones.
Monogamy is not only possible, it is our natural state.

“Dependency” is a dirty word in Western society.
Our world has long insisted that healthy adulthood requires being emotionally independent and self-sufficient, that we, in essence, draw an emotional moat around ourselves.
We talk of being able to separate and detach from our parents, our first loved ones,
as a sign of emotional strength.
And we look with suspicion at romantic partners who experience too much togetherness.
We say they are too involved with, too close to, or too dependent on one another.
In consequence men and women today feel ashamed
of their natural need for love, comfort, and reassurance.
They see it as weakness.

Again, this is backwards. Far from being a sign of frailty,
strong emotional connection is a sign of mental health.

It is emotional isolation that is the killer.
The surest way to destroy people is to deny them loving human contact.
Early studies discovered that 31 to 75 percent of institutionalized children
expired before their third birthday.
More recent studies of adopted Romanian orphans,
who had spent up to 20 hours a day unattended in their cribs,
found that many suffer from brain abnormalities, impaired reasoning ability,
and extreme difficulty in relating to others.

Adults are similarly demolished.
Prisoners in solitary confinement develop a complex of symptoms,
including paranoia, depression, severe anxiety, hallucinations, and memory loss.
They call their experience a “living death.” “
"When we isolate a prisoner in solitary confinement,”
writes Lisa Guenther,
associate professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University
and author of the book,
Social Death and Its Afterlives: A Critical Phenomenology of Solitary Confinement,
“we deprive them of the support of others,
which is crucial for a coherent experience of the world.”

The idea that we can go it alone defies the natural world.
We are like other animals—we need ties to others to survive. ….
As the Celtic saying goes, “live in the shelter of each other.”
World War II historians have noted that the unit of survival
in concentration camps was the pair, not the individual.
Married men and women generally live longer than do their single peers.

We need emotional connection
not only to survive,
but to thrive.
We are actually healthier and happier when we are close and connected.
Consistent emotional support lowers blood pressure and bolsters the immune system.
It appears to reduce the death rate from cancer and the incidence of heart and infectious disease. Patients who have coronary bypass surgery are three ties
more likely to be alive 15 years later—if they are married.
A good relationship, says psychologist Bert Uchino of the University of Utah,
is the single best recipe for good health and the most powerful antidote to aging.
He notes that 20 years of research with thousands of subjects
shows how the quality of our social support predicts general mortality
as well as mortality from specific disorders, such as heart disease.

In terms of mental health,
close connection is the strongest predictor of happiness,
much more so than making lots of money or winning the lottery.
It also significantly lessens susceptibility to anxiety and depression
and makes us more resilient to stress and trauma.
Survivors of 9/11 with secure loving relationships
were found to have recovered better than those without strong bonds.
Eighteen months after the tragedy,
they showed fewer signs of PTSD, less depression,
and their friends considered them
more mature and better adjusted
than they had been prior to the cataclysmic event.

Being the “best you can be” is really only possible
when you are deeply connected to another.

Splendid isolation is for planets, not people.

Dr. Sue Johnson - Love Sense

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The Spirit of Gratitude

What are Your Emotional Needs in a Marriage?

Am I in a Codependent Relationship?

Emotional Dependency is Not Immature or Pathological, It Is Our Greatest Strength.

Author: Jo Ellen Fletcher, M.A.Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist

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Author:
Jo Ellen Fletcher, M.A.
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist