Addicted to Love

As a segway on my blog, moving from the subject of Love for February and Addiction for March, today’s post is about those who are addicted to love.

I have a friend who is completely addicted to love. She loves the idea of love. She ends up going from one relationship to another with barely a gap between them. If you saw her Facebook feed you could be forgiven for thinking that she is a nightmare of a person to be with, but as her friend, I can tell you she’s actually a really great person. So why can’t she sort out her relationship situation?

Well, to start with, as I already mentioned, she goes from one relationship to another with barely enough chance to get catch her breath, let alone take some time to grieve for the old relationship and find calm and comfort from herself. Why is that important? Because she doesn’t know who she is. She’s never alone enough to get to know herself. I’m pretty sure if I asked her, she would say that she has a strong sense of who she is, but I don’t think she does. She certainly isn’t comfortable on her own. That’s why she goes searching for another relationship the moment the most recent one ends.

Now I don’t want to get too ‘Laws of attraction’ on you, but I do think we get back what we give out. If you’re in a happy mood you attract people who are happy. If you are in a grumpy mood, you attract people who are grumpy. If you are desperate and needy you attract either a) people who are desperate and needy (not that attractive) or b) people who will take advantage of your desperation and neediness. I would argue that neither of these is a great basis for a strong relationship.

This then leads to her being incredibly disappointed in how the relationship goes. She has wonderful expectations on what should happen. She likes a man to be a man’s man, tough and strong and able to look after her. She wants to be wined and dined. She wants them to be honest and emotionally available. She wants them to be amazing. When they turn out to be human, fallible and often a little emotionally closed off she gets upset and ends the relationship. Does she the take time to work out why this keeps happening? No, she dives straight back in again to see if she can get it right with the next one – and quite importantly, she blames them for not living up to her expectations. She constantly bemoans the fact that she can’t find a good man rather than working out why the good one’s aren’t chasing her.

So what should she do? Well to start with, take a break. Decide not to be in a relationship for a while. It would be helpful to her to take some time to let the wounds heal (and believe me, she feels like she is covered in wounds), to grow and to learn to be by herself. Then she needs to learn to love herself. Not just to put on a lot of puff and bluster (which she is already quite good at) but to actually learn to love all of herself. That means accepting the bad parts as well as the good. Once she has done that, maybe she will be able to be as kind to others. She will be able to love someone who is less than perfect, to understand them and help them in the way that she has helped herself. She will also be projecting more confidence and happiness – which I think she would find attractive in others, and they will find attractive in her.

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Not everyone finds it easy to get over a relationship or to be on their own. If you or someone you know struggles with this, maybe you could find some help from a therapist. Invest in yourself – it pays dividends.

 

A tasty, heart healthy, Valentine’s treat

February is Heart Awareness month. With that in mind, and also knowing the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach (and a women’s is through chocolate) I’ve put together a little sweet treat that’s a bit healthier than your standard brownie. The fat comes from Avocado and the sugar is mostly from maple syrup. It’s choc full of nuts (almonds and peanuts) and has a few sexy seeds thrown in for good measure. Most of all though, they taste absolutely fantastic. They are a treat, but one you shouldn’t feel too guilty about as the high protein content from the nuts and seeds will keep you feeling fuller for longer.

Ingredients

1 ripe avocado                                                     60g smooth peanut butter

75g dark brown sugar                                       1 tsp vanilla essence

30g cocoa                                                              1 large egg

30g Raw cacao                                                     50g Dried Cherries (or goji berries or cranberries)

150 g ground almonds                                      A handful of whatever seeds you fancy (I’ve used

100 ml of maple syrup                                          pumpkin seeds and flax seeds in this one)

 

Preheat oven to 180C/160c Fan/Gas 4. Line a 20cm/20cm tin with grease proof paper

Scoop out the flesh of the avocado into a bowl and mash it up (discard the stone and skin)

Now this is the tricky bit….throw everything else in the bowl and mix. How simple is that? If it seems too thick add a few tablespoons of water and mix again until you have an even consistency (with dried fruit and seeds in).

Spoon into the lined tin and try to level the top off as best you can – mine always looks a bit lumpy, but I’m OK with that.

Bake for 30 minutes or until a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean.

 

Cut into squares and enjoy x

 

 

Love is not enough

How many times have you heard ‘all you need is love’? or ‘Love conquers everything’?

It’s a cute idea, but unfortunately it’s nonsense.

In certain cultures people can get married without even having spent time together before the wedding day, yet they still go on to have beautiful, strong and often loving relationships. Others fall deeply in love with an abuser who destroys them.

Love is easy – you fall into it, you fall out of it, it just happens. A good relationship needs you to put in some effort.

In the example I gave above – falling in love with an abuser – there are some really important things missing.

Respect

A good relationship requires respect – from both parties. It doesn’t mean that you always have to agree, but you must respect each others feelings. If you dismiss how someone feels, or tell them they shouldn’t feel that way, it’s not respecting them. If you accept this behaviour from someone else – you’re not respecting yourself.

Trust

Trust can take time to build, especially if you’ve been hurt in the past. It can be destroyed in seconds. It’s one of the most fragile things in any relationship and must be handled with care. Whilst it’s obviously important to honour the trust someone gives you, it’s equally important to give that trust in the first place. Yes, you may have been hurt before, but if the hurt was caused by someone else, it’s deeply unfair to punish your partner for the behaviour of someone else.

Courtesy

Courtesy is the little things – the ‘pleases’ and ‘thankyous’. The ‘bless you’ when you sneeze, the ‘pardon me’ when you burp. It’s the small polite things that demonstrate that you are thinking about the other person all the time.

Caring and Kindness

Caring is kind of like Love light, but it’s just as important. Showing that you care about what sort of day they had. Caring about their sore foot. Caring if they are tired or want to talk. I’m not saying their feelings should always come first, but show them that you care about it. Be kind. It’s simple but if we all treated our partners with kindness we would end abuse immediately.

Reliable

To me one of the biggest things about any relationship I have is reliability. Doing what I said I would, when I said I’d do it. Showing up, every time. I can rely on my partner and they can rely on me.

Responsibility

Responsibility is about owning the obligations in the relationship and not giving excuses. I am responsible for my behaviour – no-one else. If I put myself in situations where I get drunk, take drugs, have other people influence me, that’s still my responsibility.

Honesty

I need to be honest with myself and my partner – all the time. I also expect that from them. This links back to the trust. If I want them to trust me, and I want to be happy trusting them, we need to be honest – even when it’s hard or it hurts.

Communication

Honesty is worthless if there is no communication. If someone doesn’t tell you something that’s bothering them, that’s a form of dishonesty. If you don’t tell me, how can I possibly do something about it. People seem to think that their partner should be able to read their mind. Unless you’re dating Derren Brown, that could be a little unfair.

Commitment

An here’s the big one. If I’m in a relationship with you, I’m committing to it. 100% There are no days off, there are no exceptions. All of the above, all of the time. As  I said at the beginning the love part is easy – it just happens. Maybe I’ll fall in love with someone else – I’m not in control of that. But what I am in control of is my thoughts and behaviours, and if I’m committed to the relationship, I will shut down any of the other stuff before it’s a problem.

Love just happens – a good relationship is much more beautiful than that.

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Jealousy is a horrible destructive emotion. If you need help getting over negative emotions, you should consider a therapy like hypnotherapy or BWRT.

 

How to be kind to yourself

February is heart awareness month and as I wrote yesterday, I’m focussing on the relationship side of this subject.

I strongly believe that you will not have the best relationships you can if you don’t have a good relationship with yourself, and unfortunately, it’s one of the hardest ones to get right as we don’t get good feedback on it.

Some people are too hard on themselves – way harder than they are on other people. They persistently tell themselves that they aren’t good enough, that they’re stupid, that they’re lazy, that they don’t work hard enough, that they’re not pretty enough, that they’re fat, that they’re ugly. Can you imagine if you spoke like that to another person? I think, at the very least, you could expect them not to want to hang around with you.  Why would you spend time with someone who constantly abuses you?

Some people don’t care enough for themselves. As a hypnotherapist I see people all the time who smoke, who are overweight, who don’t exercise. When I ask them how they would feel if their kids smoked, ate rubbish or didn’t do any exercise they are horrified. They want the best for them, but don’t appear to want the best for themselves….

Some people don’t protect themselves. They take stupid risks with their health. They starve themselves, or dramatically overeat. They take drugs. They put themselves in dangerous situations. Again, they would be really upset to think of someone they loved in that situation, but it’s OK for them….does that mean they don’t love themselves?

So how do you build a relationship with yourself?

Easy – the same way as with anyone else.

Start by being interested. Question yourself and your motives. Find out what is really important to you. Help yourself to achieve that.

Support yourself. Be kind, be understanding, but also be challenging. Stretch yourself without being mean to yourself.

Be a good friend to yourself. You can be your own inner bully or your own cheerleader. Think about what can go right, how brilliant things can be.

Stop being a hater. Don’t hate yourself – ever. Not any part of yourself. Hate is a horrible, destructive emotion and it doesn’t help anyone. I don’t care if you don’t love your thighs, or you skin. I don’t care if you don’t like the way you react in certain situations. I don’t care if you aren’t thrilled with your weight. Work out how to change it, but don’t hate it.

I believe that when you get this stuff right you attract people to you. Self confidence is attractive. That means you draw people towards you who enhance your life. It also means that you don’t need people to complete you so you stop hanging on to people who don’t add anything to your life.

So, whatever your relationship status, spend a little time thinking about your relationship with yourself. Are you being a good friend? How can you be better? What changes are you going to make? What positive effects could that have?

As ever, I would love to know your thoughts on this – why not drop me a comment?

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February – Heart Awareness month

Are you taking care of your heart? When you hear that, what does it make you think?

Do you think about diet and exercise? Do you think about relationships? Do you think about Self Care?

I think it should be about all of those things. I spent December writing about self care, and January writing about diet, so this month I want to write about relationships, what they mean and why they are important. Also hopefully, you’ll get some ideas on how to improve your relationships, feel better in them and get more out of them.

Today’s post though, is how to deal with the pain of the end of a relationship.

Relationships ending can be incredibly painful. Whether the end of the relationship is caused by someone ending it, or by death, there is a grief process to go through.

In both cases there is a relationship that no longer exists and grieving is a natural reaction to that.

There are famously said to be 5 stages of grief and these need to be worked through with a relationship ending.

Often the most difficult phases is denial. I have seen a number of clients in my hypnotherapy practice who say they want to get over a relationship that’s ended, but when I speak to them, they tell me what they really want is for it to be back on again. Despite saying they want to be over it, they are still in denial that it is really over. This is a terrible limbo land that can be difficult to move forward from until they accept that it’s over.

Then comes anger. It’s only natural to lash out when we are in pain, but anger is best kept in check. Not only can it make situations much worse if the anger is taken out on another person, but it can be much more serious when the anger turns inwards and we start to blame ourselves for the situation. This way leads to self-confidence issues and has other mental health implications contributing to anxiety and depression.

Now we get to bargaining. Again it’s fairly normal to bargain with our ex in order to get things back on track again, but the best person to bargain with is yourself. You need to decide how you want to get through this and make deals with yourself to help you to achieve it.

Here comes the darkest part – the depression. You will sometimes feel sad. You will sometimes feel as though you will never feel anything other than sad again. That’s not true. You will get through this. You will be happy again. You will look back on this differently one day. And now is the time to think about the bargains you made with yourself. Hopefully you decided you wanted to get through this as best as you can and work to take care of yourself. Eat well, go out, keep clean, be around people. I know it can be tough, but it will get easier.

Eventually you will get to acceptance. You may never be happy about it – then again, you might, but even if you don’t, you will learn to accept it. If you’re clever you will learn lessons from it. Know what you want, what you are prepared to accept and what you might need to do in order to get that. Also know what you need to bring to a relationship? We often think about what we want from other people, but sometimes it pays to think what they might want from us….