Strategies to Develop Healthier Relationships

an intensive externalized expectation for happiness puts so much pressure on all your relationships it makes those relationships almost impossible to succeed and that can lead to a lot of disappointment and dissatisfaction in that family in the head that we talked about it's going to just grab on to that dissatisfaction that disappointment and say see nobody's going to meet your expectations everybody's a liar everybody's a cheat and that feeds into to low self-esteem goes back to attachment issues go back to past experiences all the things that we're talking about ever wonder why some struggle to form meaningful relationships why others seem to be able to do it effortlessly well by the end of this video you'll be able to explore your own relationships in depth as we build insight and I think discussing why individuals may have difficulty developing relationships it's essential to consider these various factors these 10 factors that influence not only social interactions but also the ability to connect and we're going to dive into it well we're going to start with number one number one is past experiences and I want you to explore your past experiences this can be childhood trauma this can be bullying can even be previous relationships you had as a teen adult whatever it may be because a lot of times these past relationships impact the amount of trust we have in ourselves and in other people and we also tend to play out a lot of past patterns in relationships that those past experiences we internalize them and they become part of how we see current relationships and how we act within these relationships and it's important to certainly discuss and explore these different experiences you have to be aware of them because if you block them out they find ways to get out anyway right it's like trying to put them in tupperware but there's holes in the Tupperware so they kind of come out as like smoke or you know or kind of like if it's liquid they kind of flow out it's exactly what it is with those past experiences so we've got to confront them and I want you to check it out and look at it number two attachment Styles and there are certainly different types of attachment Styles secure is ideal right that's where we feel comfortable with ourselves others we can really be our true self with someone else and we're able to take feedback and not see any comment as criticism and we're able to be open honest and transparent with those important others in our life there's also insecure attachment Styles and this can be anxious or avoidant or even dismissing and these attachment Styles they disrupt how we connect to people and how close we're able to get so for example in a preoccupied instance for a preoccupied attachment Style is that we're preoccupied with getting close but as we get closer we then begin to get afraid so we pull back and it's that uncertainty that drives us to pull back anxious attachment Styles a lot of times we are so anxious that we want to get in this relationship but we can and we're not sure and we want to be close but we don't want to be too close and if we're too close then what do we do and how can we do it if we're too close so you're this ball of anxiety and you're trying to connect you're trying to attach but that anxiety is the bear barer in this case and in dismissing you dismiss the value of connecting to others it's easier for you to walk away from relationships so if relationships don't meet your internal expectations then you're like well bye I'm out and that means that you have 100% expectation of relationships meeting your conceptualization and that is that's unrealistic it means that you're not adding any room for error or individuality from that other person and that's not what you want and in attachment Styles they come out of early caregiving relationships and that absolutely shapes our attachment patterns there's 50 60 years of research that identifies early attachment patterns influence our adult relationships and friendships absolutely so understanding your attachment pattern is really really important for you to get an understanding understand of your current relationship not just romantic ones but also friendships working relationships and so forth and that takes us to our next one social skills well we got to look at social skills and building and maintaining relationships absolutely you need to look at your social skills and there can be difficulty with communication how clearly you communicate and that can be related to self-esteem it could be related to attachment also past experiences make sense but that Clarity in communication is critical how about empathy how about your ability to empathize with someone else's experience and even assertiveness are you able to utilize assertiveness when it's necessary as opposed to being aggressive or passive because those last two they're not great because they tear up your relationship and your ability to connect with that person we don't want to do that we want to build relationships not hinder them and it's important look at these various strategies in which you do that and all of these social skills the ones that I mentioned communication assertiveness empathy all of them also factor into your ability for conflict resolution how do you resolve conflicts you're not going to agree with everybody and you shouldn't and they shouldn't always agree with you so we want to be able to know how to resolve conflict now I have a number of videos on social skills and these various factors on communication empathy assertiveness so be sure sure to check out my other videos that address these issues as well it's building these skills because if you enhance your social skills build your sense of attachment and recognize your past experiences we're only three in to 10 you are able to understand your relationships and I want you to be impactful in your relationship but we got more to go another component that I see a lot in a lot of my clients which is a lot of fear of rejection or abandonment and it's understandable right nobody wants to feel abandoned or rejected and certainly we don't want to feel like that we're interested in somebody whether it's a friendship or romantic relationship and they're not interested in us because that can really hurt kind of who we are and it can make us question our own sense of value and in some cases we might start a relationship and then you start to get a little closer and as you start to get closer that's where what I call Core content can come into play and our core content we start to feel like we need to protect it right is that we're being too transparent we're being too open so what happens we start to use defense mechanisms our family in the head and our BPD if you're along the BPD Spectrum then these are things in your head that start to play with you and they start to play with you by saying well they don't really care about you so your defenses come up and as your defenses come up what happens is then you blow up the relationship you start making mole Hills into mountains you major in the minors and what that is there's small instances and you just blow it up you make it the biggest thing and what happens also due to this rejection and abandonment fears that it really hurts that self-esteem because you actually play out what you're trying to avoid you destroy the relationship inadvertently and unintentionally for many but you end up causing the dissolution of that relationship out of fear of the relationship ending and you may have to play that back just a few times to wrap your head around it but that's what we do our fears become so great that we blow it up so that at least we feel like we have some control control is so Central to human beings it is amazing what we will do to give us a semblance of control it doesn't necessarily mean that it's accurate it just means that we feel we have some control and also in dealing with rejection and abandonment we got to look at those negative beliefs that family in the head right those internal voices that tell us all those negative things and what we're worth and oh you know he or she is so great and you know they're just going to leave you right you don't deserve them and all of that negative talk you got to push back on it you got to push back on it practice also actually being vulnerable in safe environments who are the people in your life that you can trust and if you're going through your your life and the people in your life and you're like H nobody then I want to encourage you to seek out a mental health provider seek out somebody who can help you feel comfortable and practice being vulnerable vulnerable does not mean weak vulnerable means that you're open to feedback that you're open to hearing from someone else that you're willing to risk a part of you not all of you but a part of you to connect to someone else and that fights fear of rejection and abandonment because becomes a more honest relationship with someone else the next one is we got to be aware of low self-worth and self-esteem now here we got to look at these are Central components that if we don't have a sense of value it's hard to have healthy relationships if we feel that we deserve dirt a lot of times we end up with a lot of dirt so we have to recognize where our self-esteem is where our sense of self value is and explore absolutely self-compassion right can you be understanding of yourself and not hypercritical it is a fallacy that you will make yourself feel bad enough small enough and broken enough to do good things it's like I say in a lot of my videos you'll never make someone else feel bad enough to do good things and that goes for you too you will not make yourself feel low enough broken enough or bad enough to do good things human beings we we just don't work that way that's accentuating that low self-esteem and self-worth also practicing self-care it's about doing good things for yourself it doesn't have to be a grand gesture it can be something small maybe getting a a snack that that you like maybe even taking some time to just slow down take a breather and just kind of think about where you are in your life and what you're doing in your life to feel better about who you are and the choices you make also it's accepting yourself we have to radically accept others and who they are but we also have to radically accept ourselves too you're not perfect I'm not perfect nobody's perfect and that's actually a good thing because it's our parts that we need to work on that make us us right that what we learn from that we learn how to combat those things deal with those things and manage those things to do things differently because doing that builds confidence and it Fosters positive connections to others because we feel more genuine and we feel a greater sense of self-worth and higher self-esteem that we can be more authentic in dealing with others now number six and this is a biggie trust issues it's about looking at who you can trust and absolutely trust is not like a light switch it's not boom you got it all right the light's fully on or down it's off off you either got it or you don't it's actually like a dimmer switch whoop whoop right that that's the sound of the dimmer switch by the way whoop whoop right you like that but that's what trust is it's showing a little trust at first then a little more then a little more it's like looking at a pool right you're not going to just jump in the pool and be like oh I know it's warm woo I'm going to jump in whoa whoa whoa put your toe in put your toe in first and then you're like oo it's a little warmer than I thought you know it's colder than I thought whatever because you're testing the waters that's what trust is and it's looking at if you've experienced and all of us have to varying degrees betrayals dishonesty and breaches of trust in different ways from different people and we can internalize that and a protective mechanism if we've had our trust violated is that we then broaden it out reg generalize it and we say well you can't trust anybody every everybody's a liar everybody's a cheat that isn't true right and I I I know that people are going to leave comments and you're going to say oh wait you know everybody does lie yeah everybody lies but not with the intent to hurt you not with the intent to disrupt your life but that's what family in the head tells you is everybody going to be 100% honest with you all the time and you can trust them 100% of the time no you have to decide what your dimmer switch is how much trust can you put in place and what you're comfortable with with and that relates to all these other factors that we've talked about as well putting all of those things in place recognizing that trust is a foundational component and what what I like to say is you know who would be there if I got really sick and there are people in my life who I know would do anything they could and everything they could to be by my side and because I've had experiences with them I'm not going to tell you that those people in varying degrees dimmer switch that I haven't felt like maybe they violated my trust maybe I told them something and then they told their cousin sister brother friend who knows whatever and it came back to me and I was like what but me I'm very transparent and upfront so I usually go and talk to those people and they're like oh man I didn't know I didn't realize you know my mistake my mistake or they can explain it because I think we make the mistake when we get to trust because we're very careful of our trust and Trust can be really fragile Mak total sense but finding out about it and if they didn't mean it okay right then you you get your gimme how many gimmies do you give people I I I give people a fair amount of gimmies but over time if you keep violating my trust I'm realizing that that dimmer switch I got to keep bringing it down because you're you're showing me that I can't trust you now does that mean that I won't have you in my life at all no probably just means I'm not going to tell you any of my thoughts hopes or anything like that I mean we're going to have a very sort of flat kind of relationship and those relationships tend to be more mechanical because there isn't a lot of emotional connection and there aren't a lot of people that I spend a lot of time actually there aren't any people that I spend a lot of time with that are really low on the dimer switch but I do have people in my life um that I do talk to periodically and you know it's a very sort of it's more of um an acquaintance kind of relationship right we're not particularly close we don't talk about about our families you want to talk about our hopes dreams and expectations that's okay because we're more acquaintances usually more in a professional realm for me but what is it for you and it's looking at those components social anxiety and shyness now this is tricky because I think covid for a lot of individual particularly for covid kids that they learned a lot of social anxiety skills they missed opportunities to build some social confidence and in that it's broadened out it's gener ized to this greater sense of internalization that if I put myself out there and it doesn't work the way that I expect then I'm better off inside my shell right it's that turtle that goes whoop right inside the shell and what happens is though Turtles go inside their shell usually because there's something in the environment right that's happened kind of scared the turtle and they zip into the shell but for us for individuals with social anxiety and shyness what happens is is that they're outside right they're that turtle and they're kind of grooving along and then they make up they're like uhoh somebody could hurt me wait this isn't going to work out I don't want to go into this or that because this terrible thing is going to happen this could Terri I could be rejected abandoned we already talked about those earlier right all of these things are connected so Whoop I'm going to go in my shell I'm going to stay in my shell problem is you stay in your shell you don't feed growth it's harder to eat and nourish your mental health right so we have to do that we have to open things up you have to learn how to confront that social anxiety you have to I understand it's hard believe me I do I'll put a link right here for a video that I did for kids who were coming out of covid and even if you're not a covid kid even if you're adult and you have some social anxiety there are strategies I talk about in this video that can totally help you absolutely because we have to learn how to have control of ourselves breathing we all do it how do we know we all do it cuz we're all still alive and positive selft talk you've got to be your own Champion you have to align with your goals don't be your own enemy be your own coach be your own hero it sounds cheesy right oh that sounds cheesy hey let me tell you be your own hero to get you there you got to do it you got to do it because it's so important especially where social anxiety and shine is coming to play and gradual exposure to social situations which is that you know if if if there's a crowd of people around you don't have to go in and be like you know the life of the party right cuz we're not going to go from zero to 100 we're not going to do that right also dimmer switch for this particular instance which is social situations you know turn up the turn up the light a little bit right on your ability to get into social situations on your ability to connect now what's going to happen is that family in the head that feeds that social anxiety it's going to tell you oh everybody's staring at you everybody is looking at this about you that about you this about you let me tell you they're not the majority of people are focused on themselves and it sounds like I'm saying that in a bad way but not really not if we're talking about social anxiety that means they're just not completely evaluating you to the same degree that you're evaluating yourself and remember that remember that also if you feel like you are losing opportunities in your life and you're losing connections with others and things like that social anxiety can absolutely push you into a depressive disorder absolutely that's where a mental health provider can come into play we're learning those social strategies understanding that social anxiety where it comes from and how it's impacting your life so you can do it differently number eight mismatched expectations here we got to be realistic on our goals particularly for relationships how they relate to the relationships you got to look at those unrealistic expectations this is expecting Perfection I already touched on this earlier too it's that 100% nobody's going to meet 100% of your expectations that's unrealistic and you're driving yourself to loneliness you're driving yourself to isolation and that's not what we want you want to have realistic expectations nobody's perfect and you can't rely on others for happiness an intensive externalized expectation for happiness puts so much pressure on all your relationships it makes those relationships almost impossible to succeed and that can lead to a lot of disappointment and dissatisfaction in that family in the head that we talked about it's going to just grab on to that dissatisfaction that disappointment and say see nobody's going to meet your expectations everybody's a liar everybody's a cheat and that feeds into to low self-esteem goes back to attachment issues go back to past experiences all the things that we're talking about so we want to have level expectations genuine open honest expectations with self and others about those relationships and really take some time and assess those relationships assess so can I have a super intimate relationship with this person maybe you can maybe you can't and intimate doesn't mean sexual right intimate just means a sense of closeness how about with this friendship so can we be like super duper best friends I mean do you feel like you can is it realistic but remember that person has 50% of the relationship right they got 50% of the chips right it's kind of like and I don't mean like you know like potato chips what I mean it's like poker chips you're at the table and they have 50% of the chips it's not a bad thing and there's going to be time back and forth where they have more chips you have more chips it's that back and forth but the expectation is whatever you're setting it to be and make sure that those are realistic and grounded as it relates to the people in your life and what they can do and what they can let's talk about number nine this is a lack of opportunity or exposure man do we see this we see that now particularly after Co this this was happening before Co too but it just exploded because what happened is because now social media now we spend so much time on our phones or on our computers social media social media social media we end up so focused and inside our own bubble that we actually lose the opportunity to develop relationships we stay within our tribe so to speak we stay within that grouping and we don't dare venture out why not I've got a whole diverse group of friends some we have differing political views some we have different monetary views we have different life views we have different and that's cool I'm okay because I learn from them I learn where their view comes from and there are certain things and values that I hold that I'm like nope like I just could not be friends with somebody who believed this or that and that that's my personal choice and the people that are in my life you don't have to agree with me on everything but I want that opportunity of exposure to people who think differently because I love to learn from my friends and the people around me and I hope that they I hope they learn something from me too that would be really cool and it's important that we seek out differing social activities and social opportunities this could be clubs groups and stepping out of our comfort zone don't stay stuck in your comfort zone comfort zone makes it sound like it's a good thing it's not because if we become too dependent on that comfort zone everything stays safe we are not built as creatures that want everything to stay safe we want a little risk now that risk doesn't mean like jumping off a cliff or you know what doing like extreme sports if you're not that kind of person that's not what I'm talking about what I'm saying is is that stepping outside your comfort zone maybe meeting people who don't have the same values as you that's great you can learn about that you don't have to be super close to them but it's about giving yourself the opport Unity for exposure and growth doing book clubs doing meetups and if you're not a super social person you got some social anxiety in there start online and you can go to meetups you can go to different groups go to different places try these things expand your social Horizon and learn about life if you stay in your comfort zone you're going to get bored boredom can be an initiation or the initialization that leads to depression because as human beings we want to be challenged to some degree we want to feel safe but we want to be challenged to some degree if we don't challenge ourselves then why are we doing it it's just like a video game if you played a video game and you never had a risk of your thing the person in the video game right who was dying or whatever you know right in video games people die and then then would it be exciting to play no so I mean even Mario when he's playing sometimes he gets the sound you know and he spins around and stuff that's kind of what keeps us invested and involved in the game we want to get there it's the same thing for social situations and expanding our Social Circle and getting outside of our comfort zone last cultural and social factors we have to look at your social and cultural norms values and expectations because these can really influence relationship Dynamics in a wide variety of different ways because these can impact how we communicate what are our gender roles and expectations and what are our relationship Norms because that can absolutely impact your approach to developing and maintaining relationships look at your culture look at your folks look at your siblings if you have them look at people in your family look at other people from from your culture and learn about that culture and that belief and how that factors into relationship development if it is something that you want to be closer to great then work on that and utilize those those cultural strategies and social factors that help you connect in your relationships if not then you have to learn other ways to do it and doing it differently and remember that talking about about these components can be really important and Powerful to changing your life to having better relationships also I want you to check out this video and this is how to have healthy relationships for those with BPD but it's not just for people with BP it's about learning how to have healthy relationships if you want to take this one step further check out that video absolutely and that can be really helpful so I want you to look at these 10 components look at those friendships in your life look at that ability to develop that connection because really connection to others is so important to us as human beings and going forward and these 10 components will help you get there and do things differently thanks a lot for your time and I'll see you next time bye-bye

Channel: Dr. Daniel Fox

Views: 4,161

Keywords: relationships, keys to successful relationships, understanding bpd relationships, bpd relationships never work, npd bpd relationships, can bpd relationships work, splitting bpd relationships, codependent and bpd relationships, successful bpd relationships, quiet bpd relationships, do bpd relationships work, bpd mother daughter relationships, bpd and narcissistic relationships, dr fox bpd relationship, dr fox borderline personality disorder, dr fox bpd, dr fox npd

Id: qSVlytsxLDk

Length: 26min 30sec (1590 seconds)

Published: Wed May 22 2024