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: therapy
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 …
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 …
What is YOUR Word for 2023?
Rather than write a list of intentions for the New Year, I prefer to have a ‘word for the year’ that I can keep referring to. I can refer to it when I am making decisions and occasionally review the …
Ideas for the ‘Struggle’ Relationship Phase
It is normal to have conflict and struggle in a relationship. When you begin a relationship, you usually spend a while in the honeymoon phase and lose part of yourselves as you enter the intoxicating phase of merging. As your …
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 …
Are You Triggered By Your Parents?
We all carry wounds from our childhood. It might be that you were teased for being chubby, you were pushed to succeed academically, or there wasn’t enough to eat. When these wounds are left unresolved, we might find ourselves as …
Tips to Consciously Create the Life you Want
“The best way to predict your future is to create it” – Abraham Lincoln. When we start our healing journey, we move from a state of lack of awareness into a place of awareness. Awareness of how we think, speak, …
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 …
Interrupting Intergenerational Trauma
Reparenting helps you connect to the vulnerable part of yourself and learn to give it everything that was not received when you were a child. When we are parenting ourselves in a loving, supportive and safe way when we have …