If you grew up with a lot of criticism around you, you likely have a loud, critical voice in your head as an adult. Usually, that critical voice is directed inwards, but in intimate relationships, many people find that the …
Tag: communication
Tips to Become Less Defensive
The four communication styles that have a negative impact on your relationships: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling. Everyone will have a favoured method. Mine is defensiveness. Defensiveness is a response to criticism and tends to increase conflict because the other …
Communicating with Someone Who is Highly Anxious
When faced with someone experiencing high anxiety, rather than giving advice, which can feel invalidating, a better approach is to seek to understand how it is for the person. Let them know you are with them, and they are not …
Break the Cycle of Toxic Criticism and Defensiveness
When someone comes at you with criticism, the natural response is to defend. Criticism is a form of attack, so it is natural to protect instinctively unless you know how criticism and defensiveness play out in a relationship. Those of …
Questions to Ask During the ‘Difference’ Relationship Phase
This is the phase where we step back from the intense merging of the honeymoon phase, we take off the rose-tinted glasses and ask ourselves if we can live with the reality of the other person. It is easy to …
Important Questions for the Honeymoon Phase
The honeymoon stage usually lasts up to two years but will vary for every relationship. It is the time when we fall in love, Hollywood style. You are both wearing your rose-tinted glasses, you spend a lot of time together, …
1 Tip for Holidays
Happy holidays! Let me know what your one tip is. P.s I love the sounds of Bali in the background and didn’t want to cover it up with music … especially the rooster
Implementing the 5 Love languages
We all feel love in different ways. It might be that you could spend hours and hours together, but if you were not touched, you would feel completely unloved. Or it might be that you could be hugged and kissed …
Key Components for Boundary Setting with In-Laws
This is a personal one…for me, point 3, ‘manage your expectations’ was a huge learning with my in-laws. I grew up with basically six people in my family; my mum, dad, sister, nan, and grandad (my mother’s parents), and we …
Tips for Boundary Setting with In-Laws
I have received many DMs about the struggle to merge two different families with differing expectations, norms, and values. The critical thing to remember with in-laws is to have a united front with your partner. This is where I see …