Day: February 8, 2021

Have you lost interest in things you once used to enjoy? Do you feel like you have no motivation to do anything in your life? 

It is perfectly normal to experience bouts of apathy every once in a while, but when it occurs often, it can have a significant impact on your overall quality of life, including your relationships and work performance. Emotional intimacy coaching and other forms of support can make a big difference if you’re feeling apathetic, so don’t hesitate to reach out. 

In the meantime, read on to find out more about apathy and how you can overcome it. 

What Does It Mean To Feel Apathetic?

Apathy is defined as a lack of interest or motivation in activities and/or interactions with other people. When you feel apathetic, you don’t feel much of anything – activities that you used to enjoy no longer excite you and make you happy. You might lack the desire to achieve your goals or perform activities that involve your emotions or thoughts. 

While apathy literally means to be “without feeling”, it is nevertheless a feeling itself, as well as an attitude. Unfortunately, this attitude is one of unconcern, dispassion, indifference, listlessness, and detachment. You lack interest to confront the challenges in your life and turn to a life of passivity. 

The common theme that clients share when they are feeling apathy is “it’s hopeless”. 

While most people experience apathy from time to time, it is important to seek support if apathy pervades your life. If not dealt with, apathy can affect your social, professional, and romantic relationships. You may withdraw and distance yourself from your partner and become unhappy in your relationship, struggle to keep a job, or be unable to enjoy life in general. 

Symptoms Of Apathy 

You may be experiencing apathy if you: 

• Lack the energy to perform everyday tasks
• Expect other people to initiate or plan activities
• Lack the motivation to deal with your own problems 
• Lack the desire to have new experiences, make new friends, or learn new skills
• Don’t feel any emotions when bad or good things happen to you 

What Is The Root Of Apathy?

People can fall into apathy for a wide variety of reasons. Some common causes include: 

• Negative feelings and thoughts about yourself: when you feel worthless, useless, incompetent, and generally pessimistic about your life and abilities for a while, it is likely that you might move on to apathy and detachment. 
• Major life events: feelings of distress, anger, and sadness caused by major events such as breaking off a toxic relationship or getting fired from a job can turn into apathy. Instead of feeling upset or angry, you are completely indifferent. 
• Being stagnant in your life: if you’re stuck in a boring routine, working 9-5 shifts and performing the same activities every single day, it is easy to forget about your goals and dreams and then feel like you are not living your best life. 
• Feeling worn down or overwhelmed: apathy can also arise from situations and events that leave you feeling overwhelmed, not bored. Nevertheless, you’re still left with detachment, low energy, and indifference. 
• Mental health issues: apathy can also be a symptom of neurological and psychiatric disorders such as anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s, stroke, and others. This is why it is essential to seek support for your apathy sooner rather than later. 

Does Apathy Go Away?

It is entirely natural to feel apathetic at some point in your life, especially after a distressing event or prolonged periods of loneliness and boredom. For most people, however, apathy goes away with time, and they become motivated to chase their goals and maintain relationships once again.  

If the apathy is chronic, on the other hand, it may pervade your life and keep you from improving your life. The longer you remain stuck in your feelings of detachment, passivity, and indifference, the harder it will be for you to break the bubble. Fortunately, you can fight apathy with appropriate help and guidance, and perhaps with a little push from the people around you. 

How Do You Fix Apathy In A Relationship?

If you’ve been feeling bored in your romantic relationship or detached from your partner, you may be wondering if it’s better to leave and start over or work on your feelings of apathy to bring the spark back. Here’s how you can deal with apathy in your relationship:

We Bring You Expert Solutions For Building Intimacy In A Relationship

If you’ve been feeling disconnected, disengaged, and indifferent, know that you are not alone. At PIVOT, we provide individuals and couples with tailored guidance and support that can help them find the motivation to facilitate positive change. 

Our dedicated staff can help you heal through specialized individual coaching as well as a range of intensive workshops for deepening relationships. Get in touch with PIVOT today and start building a better future for yourself and your loved ones.

Depending on who you ask, it’s likely that you’ll run into a number of different definitions of empathy. Still, most of them would agree to the following statement, or at least a variation of it: Empathy can be defined as the capacity to understand and feel what another person is experiencing. 

It is an attempt to better understand what another person is feeling and thinking, without sharing the same circumstances or experiences. Essentially, when you feel empathy, you’re trying to see a situation from another person’s perspective and feel how it makes them feel. 

Empathy is necessary for building healthy relationships and avoiding emotional intimacy issues. It helps you connect and relate to others in a meaningful way, thus facilitating lasting social and professional relationships. 

What Type Of Emotion Is Empathy?

Empathy is a broad concept that usually refers to the emotional and cognitive reactions of a person to the perceived experiences of another person. It is not a single emotion, but rather an ability to understand the emotions of others, trying to perceive the situation from their point of view. Empathy essentially refers to the capacity to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and understand the intentions, perspectives, and needs of others. 

What Are The 3 Types Of Empathy?

Not everybody experiences the same levels and kinds of empathy. In fact, psychologists suggest that there may be three distinct types of empathy:  

People have the capacity to experience all these three types of empathy. While cognitive and emotional empathy can have immense value, they are sometimes not enough for facilitating change and building strong personal relationships. 

Imagine that your friend has experienced a loss in their family. If you experience only cognitive empathy, you’ll be able to understand their grief and pain, but may not be motivated to help. With emotional empathy, you might be brought to tears and get paralyzed by your friend’s pain.

Compassionate empathy, however, means that you understand and feel the pain of your friend, but also feel motivated to take action to help them. For instance, you may cook them a meal or spend more time with them to make them feel less lonely. 

Can You Feel Sympathy Without Empathy?

Many people are confused by the difference between empathy and sympathy, and for a good reason. These two words are tightly related, but not interchangeable. At its simplest form, sympathy can be defined as feeling sorrow and pity for another person’s misfortune without necessarily cognitively understanding their pain and feeling motivated to help. If you experience sympathy, you may feel care or concern for others, but may not share their distress. 

You can feel sympathy without empathizing with someone. Empathy, on the other hand, usually entails some form of sympathy, in addition to the shared perspective or shared emotions one feels when they experience cognitive or emotional empathy. 

Can You Lose Your Empathy?

There are several circumstances in which a person may “lose” empathy. Here are some examples: 

• You may be pushing your emotions away and numbing out. If you’ve felt apathetic for a while, because of depression or other life circumstances, you may also lose your ability to empathize with other people.
• Gradually losing empathy can be a symptom of compassion fatigue, a condition characterized by physical and emotional exhaustion that decreases one’s ability to empathize. This is particularly common in nurses, caregivers, and other vocations that entail helping other people and being exposed to their pain. 
• Certain psychological disorders can also cause a lack of empathy. These can be a result of early childhood experiences, physical or psychological trauma, genetics, disease, or brain damage. 

Can A Person Without Empathy Love?

Love doesn’t necessarily include empathy. For instance, you may care for your partner and wish to nurture a lasting relationship with them, but fail to understand their needs. Lacking empathy doesn’t mean that you’re entirely emotionless, it simply means that you are unable to understand and share the feelings and needs of your partner. 

Nevertheless, empathy is crucial for making personal relationships thrive. In order to revive your dying relationship, you and your partner would benefit from  learning how to truly understand each other and empathize with one another . Unless you’re moving forward with both your needs and those of your partner in mind, your relationship will be at risk to end. 

Are You Experiencing Intimacy Problems In A Relationship? Contact PIVOT Now! 

If you are motivated to better understand and help the people around you, receiving guidance and support from professionals can be of immense help. At PIVOT, we are dedicated to helping our clients overcome their emotional issues and heal their core wounds with compassion and commitment. We are here to provide you with the tools and resources you need to understand yourself and others and facilitate positive behavioral change. 

We offer both compassionate and comprehensive individual coaching sessions and relationship-building workshops and retreats that can help you improve your relationships and your emotional wellbeing. Speak with a PIVOT consultant today and begin your journey to achieving emotional balance. 

Respect is a crucial part of any relationship. If you respect your partner, you are able to recognize them as a whole person with different experiences, needs, and opinions from you. You value and understand their perspective, which enables you to show empathy in your relationship and make your partner feel loved.

If you feel like your partner doesn’t respect you or you suspect that you may not respect them as you should, attending a relationship building skills workshop may provide you with the guidance you need to improve your relationship. 

Keep reading to learn more about what respect means in a relationship and how you can nurture it. 

What Does Respect Mean In A Relationship?

Most people are brought up perceiving respect as a good thing, a thing to strive for. However, not everyone is able to show respect, and many may not understand what it actually means. Respect doesn’t simply mean obeying your parents or being polite to elders. Respect in its truest form means validating another person and making them feel safe in the relationship. Here’s how respect manifests itself in relationships: 

Can You Love Without Respect?

Many people consider love to be the key part of any relationship. While love is undoubtedly important, respect may play an even greater role. You may feel passion and love towards your partner, but lack respect for their opinions, needs, and wishes. 

The difference between love and respect is not that difficult to understand. Think about it – you may have respect for a person you don’t know that well if you recognize their good qualities. Similarly, you can also love the person closest to you dearly, but not respect them for their life choices. If you wish to nurture positive and long-lasting relationships, a combination of love and respect is necessary.   

Can You Regain Respect In A Relationship?

If you feel like your partner doesn’t respect you, it is only natural that you’d feel frustrated or sad in your relationship. You may feel like they don’t value you and your opinions, capabilities, and choices. If this is the case, you may be wondering if it’s possible to bring back respect into your relationship and create a stronger foundation for your relationship. 

While not all relationships can be saved, it is definitely possible to regain respect from your partner. In order for your relationship to thrive, however, both you and your partner will have to be willing to listen and open up, working together to improve the aspects of your relationship that don’t benefit one or both of you. 

How Do You Feel Respected In A Relationship?

In order to get your partner to respect you more, you’ll have to be willing to openly discuss your needs and concerns with them. Here’s how you can do that: 

• Speak up: you can’t expect your partner to meet your needs and respect you if they don’t know what you’re thinking. They may not even be aware that you think they don’t respect you. Make sure to discuss with them honestly, without placing blame and starting a fight. 
• Work on your independence: being independent means that you can be successful and happy on your own and be self-sufficient. This doesn’t mean that you don’t need your partner at all, but only that you possess autonomy that your partner is sure to admire and respect you for.  
• Respect yourself first: you can’t expect anybody to respect you if you don’t respect yourself. Do you value your own abilities and opinions? Do you see yourself as a worthy and capable person? If not, it’s unlikely that your partner will either. 
• Maintain your boundaries: respecting boundaries is a key part of respect. Make sure to keep healthy boundaries and learn to say no to your partner if they try to cross the line. Keep in mind that respect goes both ways – you should respect your partner’s boundaries as well. 
• Follow the Golden Rule: if you wish your partner to treat you with respect, make sure to treat them the same way. Unless you approach your relationship with compassion and commitment, your partner will be unlikely to do the same. 
• Keep your promises: if you tell your partner that there will be consequences for something they did, but don’t follow through, they probably won’t take you seriously. This holds true for more positive promises as well.  
• Don’t be afraid to walk away: if you’ve done all you can to improve your relationship but nothing has changed, it may be time to consider leaving the relationship. After all, the relationship may be toxic and you might be wasting precious energy on trying to make it work. 
• Seek guidance from experts: on a more positive note, many relationships can be greatly improved through expertise-based coaching and guidance. If you feel like your partner doesn’t respect you enough, but they may be willing to change, consider attending a couples retreat. 

Build Respect And Trust In Your Relationship By Attending A PIVOT Workshop

At PIVOT, we work hard to provide our clients with the support and advice they need to better their relationships and improve their emotional wellbeing. Empower yourself through our individual coaching or build better relationship skills in one of our retreats and workshops. Contact PIVOT today and get the love and respect you deserve. 

When you are in a loving and stable relationship with a person you can rely on, there should be no reason to feel down, right? Yet, sadness can creep into even the happiest of relationships, and that is entirely normal, even if there are no specific reasons why one or both of the partners are feeling sad. 

And, often the sadness can be a deep generational pain that is carried forward from a complex family system that you are born into. 

It is important to understand that it is okay to not always be happy in your relationship. Anxiety, depression, and various life circumstances can cause anyone to feel sad, however loving, caring, and kind the people around you are. 

Of course, this does not mean that you shouldn’t ask yourself if it is your relationship that is making you unhappy. After all, some relationships can be quite toxic, causing distress and unhappiness for one or both parties involved. If you and your partner are struggling to make it work and you’re feeling down because of it, there are numerous private couple retreats for reconnection that may help you overcome your problems and bring the balance back. 

Is It Okay To Be Sad In A Relationship?

Negative emotions are an integral part of our psychological makeup. While you may be able to allay some of them using distractions and various coping mechanisms, others may be incredibly hard to ignore. What’s more, suppressing negative feelings can have serious consequences on your mental health and general life enjoyment. 

All of this is to say that feeling sad is perfectly okay, even if you can’t tell the exact reason for your low mood. Your emotions are valid, and ignoring them is unlikely to make you feel better in the long run. 

Additionally, accepting your sadness can give you a chance to slow down, reflect, and come to terms with your situation. It is a complex and essential emotion that helps us focus, adapt, accept, and grow. 

If you are in a loving relationship, your partner will most likely try to understand your feelings and support you, or at least give you space to work it through. On the other hand, your sadness can change your perception and affect your relationship in a variety of ways, creating potential difficulties for both you and your partner. This is why reaching out to professionals is often the best idea if you feel like your negative emotions are impacting your relationship. 

How Do I Tell My Partner I Am Struggling?

As hard as it may sound, speaking up about your negative feelings and the way they affect you can help your partner better understand you and find ways to help you. Whether you’re dealing with general feelings of apathy or struggle with anxiety, letting your partner know about your emotions can be beneficial both for the relationship and your emotional wellbeing as a whole. 

How Do You Deal With Sadness In A Relationship?

Everybody deals with sadness differently. Some withdraw from the people closest to them, while others like to talk about their worries openly. Here are some general tips on dealing with sadness in a healthy manner: 

• Let yourself feel the sadness: suppressing your negative emotions may work for a little while, but won’t help you in the long run. If you feel like crying, cry. Allow yourself to feel sad. 
• Express your emotions: depending on your preferences and situation, you can try to express your sadness through journaling, listening to music, drawing, painting, or spending time with family or friends. 
• Think about why you’re feeling sad: try to determine the cause of your sadness. Is there any specific event that made you feel sad? Think about how you feel without judgment and see where your thoughts take you. 
• Consider possible changes: sometimes, people feel sad because they subconsciously feel like something in their life needs to change. Consider that possibility and think about any potential paths for improving your relationships and overall quality of life. 
• Know when to seek help: if you feel down while you’re with your partner most of the time, it may be time to take a step forward and speak with a compassionate expert who can help you get a new perspective and uncover ways to improve your relationship. 

Attend A PIVOT Couples Retreat & Relationship Workshop Today

At PIVOT, we strive to help couples and individuals overcome relationship issues and find happiness in their day to day life. Our highly rated individual coaching sessions and relationship workshops are designed to help you heal by understanding your core relationship wounds and finding ways to facilitate positive change. 

If you are ready to take the first step towards modifying your behavioral patterns and building happier relationships, contact PIVOT today. 

There are many ways to describe toxic relationships. Perhaps you or your partner are very angry in your relationship, or there is excessive codependency between partners. Sometimes, relationship toxicity stems from the fact that there are instances of serious dishonesty, or your partner has begun to stonewall you. It is not always easy to identify the causes of a toxic relationship, which is one of the reasons they are so difficult to heal. 

If you are struggling in your relationship, it’s important to learn more about what a toxic relationship is and what can cause it. This can help you understand more about the situation you’re in, and how to deal with it. However, if you still find yourself unable to adequately pinpoint the characteristics of your potentially toxic relationship, it’s a good idea to give remote relationship coaching a try.

What Is A Toxic Relationship?

Toxic relationships are those relationships that include behaviors by one or both partners that are primarily psychologically damaging, and can also sometimes inflict physical harm. Healthy relationships contribute to partners’ emotional energy and self-esteem, while toxic ones tend to make one or both parties feel inadequate and unhappy.

The underlying trait of all toxic relationships is that they are not a safe place for one or both parties involved. Toxic relationships are characterized by feelings of insecurity, dysfunctionality, control, dominance, and other negative emotions that can originate. Constantly feeling negative emotions is what tends to cause mental harm.

Unfortunately, sometimes the toxicity in the relationships transitions into the physical realm as well, which is when one or both parties become behaving violently towards each other. This, coupled with the psychological negativity, is an extremely serious problem that can cause serious consequences. 

What Are The Signs Of A Toxic Relationship?

Sometimes, it is easy to be aware that you’re in a toxic relationship. However, at other times, you might be part of an unhealthy relationship without even knowing it, which can only damage your mental health further. Take a look at some of the telltale signs of toxic relationships: 

• You seem to be sacrificing your own needs constantly.
• You start to feel invisible or erased from your relationship.
• Your relationship is beginning to feel lonely. 
• It seems you and your partner only bring out the worst in each other.
• You feel emotionally and physically tired after spending time with your partner.
• You notice that the giving and the taking in the relationship is uneven. 
• There are controlling tendencies from one or both partners.
• There are frequent problems caused by jealousy.
• You or your partner are experiencing an evident lack of respect.
• There is emotional, psychological, or physical abuse present.
• Gaslighting is present in your relationship.
• There are serious communication problems between you and your partner. 
• You feel the resentment rising.
• Only a single person is in charge of making decisions. 

What Causes A Toxic Relationship?

There are a lot more causes for relationship toxicity, and not everything can be clearly categorized. The four causes above are just some of the more frequently-encountered triggers of toxic relationships that can be resolved by putting in the effort and the desire. 

Why Is It Hard To Leave A Toxic Relationship?

Although you might be experiencing several signs of relationship toxicity, and you’re aware of the reasons behind it, you’re still not ready to leave and you’re not sure you should. Apart from problems that can be resolved, there are some issues, such as physical abuse, that are serious red flags and that indicate it’s time to leave your partner.

However, even then, not everybody is willing and prepared to abandon their relationship. There are several reasons why leaving a toxic relationship is extremely difficult for some people. Let’s see what they are:

• Your self-esteem has been severely damaged and you have no strength to leave.
• You’re trying to be understanding and work on your relationship as much as you can.
• You’re hoping it’s going to become good again and that things will change for the better.
• You grew up in a toxic environment and it starts to feel natural.
• You’ve invested a lot of time and energy and you don’t want to see it go to waste.
• You cannot imagine being without a partner and returning to being alone. 

PIVOT Codependency Recovery Coaching Can Help You Deal With A Toxic Relationship

Toxic relationships can be very difficult to deal with, especially if you’re unaware of just how toxic your relationship might have become. Sometimes, all that you do turns out to be insufficient and the toxicity just continues to deepen, negatively affecting your mental state.

If you’re finding yourself unable to identify the underlying causes of the psychological strain your relationship is inflicting upon you, or if you’re aware of the toxicity in your relationship, but don’t know what you can do about it, you can always try coming to PIVOT and undergoing codependency recovery coaching alongside our experienced advocates.

At PIVOT, we specialize at organizing both individual coaching experiences for emotional intimacy, as well as group relationship workshops for both partners. Our experienced and educated relationship advocates are here to do all they can to help you either overcome the hurdles or assist you in knowing when the right time to leave a toxic relationship is. Contact us today and let’s take it from there.