Mindfulness- An Effective Tool For Building Healthy Relationships
Applying mindfulness helps to understand more about the partner's inner feelings, fondness and admiration and helpful in building long lasting relationships
Clients who come to me often ask a very common question: "Is it possible to maintain a healthy and stable relationship for a long period?". My answer is yes, it's possible, and then the next question comes, “How?”. And the answer is through the practice of mindfulness. To understand the concept better, let's know more about it.
Understanding mindfulness
Mindfulness is bringing one’s attention to the present without evaluating it. Whenever you bring awareness to what you are experiencing via your senses or thoughts and emotions, you’re being mindful. The main goal of mindfulness is to wake up the inner workings of your mental, physical and emotional processes.
Mindfulness – A practice in relationship
As a relationship expert, I would like to explain in detail the implementation of mindfulness in relationships. Here are some of the ways to do it.
Expressing Positive regard via gratitude: Practising gratitude can help your mind to focus on the positive rather than the negative - to look for opportunities rather than failures. So expressing gratitude to your partner is mutually rewarding. Gratitude can be as simple as expressing through a letter of appreciation or thanking your partner for making efforts and being thoughtful daily, like making a meal or doing laundry.
Mindful listening: Listening often takes time, but we often jump to judgements before hearing the whole content. So it's necessary to enhance your listening skills as it is very important for stable and healthy relationships. Simply listen to your partner, their expressions and posture to try this practice. Listen to what they say without giving any suggestions or solving their issues. Once your partner stops sharing, summarize what he/she was trying to express to get a better idea.
Knowing your partner’s inner world: Ask questions to your partner and know more about their inner world. Even if you interact with them every hour, every day keep in mind that all humans are changing in their way. If you ask more questions, it shows that you are interested in knowing more about them and what is happening in your partner’s life. It also helps you to understand more of their unexplored side.
Primary emotion vs Secondary emotion
Exploring your emotion, rather than avoiding it will help you to understand the underlying emotions, and it helps you to differentiate between primary and secondary emotions.
Let's understand more about it; primary emotions are the first emotion that stems from your immediate surroundings, like sadness and fear. Secondary emotions are the feelings you experience after your primary emotion, like frustration or guilt. Secondary emotions are way stronger, and it has a destructive effect on the relationship. So it is necessary to differentiate between both emotions.
So next time you feel a strong emotion, take a few deep breaths, soften your mind, and pay attention to the sensations and stories moving through us. After a few moments, you can try to express in a new way.If your partner is the one who is undergoing strong emotion, take a few deep breaths through the heart and encourage a mutual, thoughtful exploration of what is present.
Creating space between yourself and this wave of energy
When an emotion is present, you can create a bit of distance between it and yourself; you can mindfully acknowledge the feelings that are present, and remove the “I” from your observations. So rather than expressing as “I am frustrated,” you should note the “sad”, turning the physiological expression of this emotion as well.
If your partner is the one who is experiencing the strong emotion, you can compassionately remind yourself and help your partner to inquire about and express what is there mindfully.
Benefits of being mindful
First, being mindful helps contribute to satisfaction in life, making it easier to enjoy the pleasures as they occur, helping you to engage in activities fully and creating a capacity to handle stressful situations better. Next, it helps improve physical health in several ways, like better sleep, relieving stress, and lowering blood pressure. It also helps improve mental health, like depression, eating disorders, and conflicts within the family.
If you require professional counselling to manage your relationship, please get in touch with me. I will help you in dealing with issues.
Sakthilakshmi is a qualified Psychologist (Counselling), based in Chennai, India.
With a commitment to mental health, Miss Vetrivel provides services in English and Tamil, including Counselling (Career), Counselling (Divorce), Counselling (Family), Counselling (General), Counselling (Marriage), Individual and Couple Therapy, Therapy (Adolescents), Therapy (Child) and Therapy (Individual).
Miss Vetrivel has expertise in Adjusting to Change/Life Transitions, Adolescent Counselling, Anger Management Issues, Anxiety Disorders, Behavioural and Emotional Problems, Child Stress and Trauma, Depression, Divorce and/or Separation, Eating and Food Issues and Relationships and Marriage Problems.
Click here to schedule a session with Miss Vetrivel.
Important:
TherapyRoute does not provide medical advice. All content is for informational purposes and cannot replace consulting a healthcare professional. If you face an emergency, please contact a local emergency service. For immediate emotional support, consider contacting a local helpline.
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