Personal Growth Archives

Idealization In Relationships: Beyond the Fantasy

Posted on August 15, 2024 by Lori Jean Glass

Have you ever caught yourself marveling at your partner—almost pinching yourself because being with them feels too good to be true? It’s a beautiful feeling, isn’t it—that early spark of love where every glance and word feels like magic. I get it; we’ve all been swept up in that rush, seeing only the best in someone we adore. This is what idealization in relationships looks like: placing your partner on a pedestal, amplifying their charm and kindness, while their flaws seem to vanish into thin air. It’s a natural part of falling in love, and you’re not alone in feeling that thrill—or the confusion when that perfect image starts to fade.

What Is Idealization In Relationships?

Idealization in relationships is when you place your partner on a pedestal, exaggerating their positive qualities while overlooking their flaws. It’s a psychological process rooted in the excitement of new love, where your brain, flooded with feel-good chemicals like dopamine, paints your partner as the answer to your hopes and dreams. Think of it as seeing them through a filter that highlights their best traits—kindness, humor, or ambition—while muting anything less than perfect.

This tendency often stems from our deep-seated desire for connection and security. In the early stages of a relationship, idealizing your partner can feel protective, shielding you from doubts or fears about vulnerability. However, as the relationship evolves, this idealized image can set unrealistic expectations, leading to disappointment or conflict when reality creeps in.

Why Do We Idealize Our Partners?

Idealization is a psychological and biochemical process that happens when we create positive illusions about another person, exaggerating their virtues and ignoring their flaws. When we begin to fall in love, we tend to feel a strong tendency to idealize, seeing the love interest as a little bit more talented, beautiful, and charming than they may actually be.

There are many reasons why we do this – some people idealize out of fear, not ready to face the fact that the person they’re obsessed with is not perfect. Others may idealize a past relationship because they want to validate their past decisions and strong feelings.

Emotional unavailability can also lead to idealization, as individuals may not acknowledge critical emotional needs, leading to unrealistic perceptions of their partners.

What Happens To Your Brain When You Are In Love

When we go through an infatuation stage in a relationship, a biochemical process happens in our brains. This process is quite similar to addiction and we can do very little in terms of controlling it. As different chemical substances are altered and generated in your brain, such as phenylethylamine, norepinephrine, and dopamine, you may experience some of the following symptoms during the infatuation stage:

Increased nervous excitement, followed by cold sweats and flushing
Stomach tingling, shivers, palpitations
Extreme focus on the loved one
Increased feelings of dependency
A strong desire to be one with your partner
Heightened feelings of anxiety and euphoria

These physical symptoms are often accompanied by intense emotions, which can further fuel the idealization process.

Is Idealization In Relationships A Defense Mechanism?

Exaggerating the virtues and minimizing the flaws of a person you’re interested in is perfectly normal at the start of a relationship. But did you know that you may be protecting yourself from ambivalent feelings towards the person? In psychoanalytic theory, idealization is seen as a defense mechanism that helps us navigate our confusing feelings and maintain a positive image of the people that matter to us.

Idealization as a defense mechanism is often mentioned in relation to splitting. We tend to “split” when we fail to bring together both the negative and positive qualities of a person into a realistic whole – they are either all bad or all good, there is no middle ground. This black and white thinking process tends to start in childhood, when a child is unable to combine the bad and the good aspects of their parental figures, instead seeing them as either one or the other.

What Is The Idealization And Devaluation Cycle?

Throughout childhood and adolescence, idealization is a natural part of growing up. We tend to start with idealizing our parents, then our friends and partners as part of the separation process in our teenage and adolescent years. In adulthood, our tendency to idealize should start to wane, transforming into a more balanced and integrated sense of others and the self.

But when it doesn’t get appropriately integrated during adulthood, idealization in relationships is often followed by a pattern of devaluation. This combination is known as the idealization and devaluation cycle and can be characteristic of different personality disorders and behavioral conditions, such as borderline personality disorder, codependency and pathological narcissism.

Individuals prone to idealization and devaluation are often also prone to splitting. They may view people in their life as either all good or all bad, idealizing them at first and then devaluing them by attributing exaggerated negative traits to them.

For instance, if you were a target of a narcissist, they may subject you to excessive love bombing in the early stages of the relationship, and then devalue you using different manipulation tactics such as stonewalling, gaslighting, minimization, and so on.

How Do I Stop Idealizing My Partners?

Whether you are putting an ex-partner on a pedestal or tend to see each new relationship as something more special than it actually is, there is a likelihood that you may still be dealing with past emotional pain and trauma. If you’ve noticed that you have a strong tendency to idealize your romantic relationships, try the following tips:

Look into the past
You may be idealizing your interpersonal relationships because you have unresolved trauma from childhood or adolescence, and exploring your past hurt may give you a new perspective.
Learn to love yourself
Invest some time in taking care of and accepting yourself for who you are, flaws and all. Self-love and care is the first step to integrating the conflicting parts of your personality.
Understand that nobody is perfect
The key to overcoming your tendency to idealize is to accept the fact that people are complex beings, with both positive and negative attributes that can all coexist within a person at the same time.
Work on healing your core wound
In order to be at peace with the complexity of yourself and others, you should work on understanding and healing your core emotional wound.
Seek help from professionals
The best way to integrate difficult feelings and create healthier relationships is to reach out to qualified professionals who will give you the resources you need to live a happier life.

Find The Balance You Seek At Our Relationship Intensive Workshop

Whether you are struggling with letting your guard down or need help dealing with past trauma, don’t be afraid to reach out and find the help you need and deserve. Joining support groups and engaging in therapy can provide emotional support and validation needed for personal growth. At PIVOT, we work with experienced relationship coaches who love helping couples and individuals find happiness and balance in their lives.

We offer a great number of carefully crafted relationship workshops and retreats, as well as individual coaching designed to help you heal and better understand yourself and others. Get in touch us today!

Commitment Issues In Relationships: How To Overcome Them

Posted on August 15, 2024 by Lori Jean Glass

Many individuals fear commitment and will struggle with situations that require them to establish a long-term connection or obligation to another person.

People with commitment issues or commitment phobia experience great levels of anxiety in relationships. The commitment challenges they face can take a great toll on both parties in the relationship and often the only way to overcome these obstacles is to seek external help, whether it’s in the form of individual coaching or a dating problems workshop.

Read on to learn what commitment issues are, how they occur, and how you can deal with them.

What Are Relationship Commitment Issues?

In order to understand why you or your partner have commitment issues, you first need to know what commitment actually means. In the most basic sense, it can be defined as an obligation or bond to a single person, goal, or cause. Commitment phobia can affect all areas of one’s life, including their romantic relationships, friendships, and professional life.

It’s important to understand here that a person struggling with commitment issues probably craves to establish emotional intimacy and maintain a long-term relationship. However, the intense feelings they experience in the relationship may be more scary to them than to most people, making it hard for them to stay in the situation for long.

What Causes Commitment Issues In Relationships?

The roots of commitment issues tend to go back to a person’s early childhood. Oftentimes, an individual with commitment issues will have an avoidant or ambivalent attachment style. This means that the relationships the person experienced in early childhood, particularly with parents or caregivers, impacted their adult relationships in a way that makes commitment such a challenge.

Avoidant individuals tend to be wary of being vulnerable in a relationship and showing genuine emotion. This may be because they were hurt in a previous romantic relationship or the issue may go further back to potentially unresponsive or unavailable parents. Either way, a person with an avoidant style will likely perceive most people as unreliable and will go out of their way to avoid pain in their relationships.

Causes Of Commitment Phobia

Naturally, the exact causes of commitment issues will differ from one person to another. Nevertheless, there are certain factors that can influence a person’s commitment phobia. Here are some of them:

Unhealthy relationships with abusive, unfaithful or controlling partners
Neglectful or unresponsive parental figures
Parents’ marital problems or divorce
Deeply rooted trust issues
Traumatic events in formative years
Intense fear of being hurt in a relationship, etc.

Of course, no two individuals will have the exact same background. As a result, commitment issues can manifest in a variety of different ways. While some individuals may struggle with even starting a long-term relationship, others will try to maintain long-term relationships only to sabotage it once their fears become more intense.

Dating Someone With Commitment Issues

Being in a relationship with an individual with commitment phobia can be incredibly stressful. If your partner has trouble committing and showing their true feelings, it’s only natural that you’d feel lost and confused in the relationship.

However, confusion and resentment may not always stem from commitment phobia. Determining if your partner has underlying commitment issues would require them to share their thoughts and feelings and that’s a tough deal for most commitment-phobes.

How To Tell If Your Partner Has Commitment Issues

If you aren’t sure whether your partner struggles with commitment, ask the following questions:

What were their previous relationships like? Typically, commitment-phobes tend to have a history of unstable and short-lived relationships. Also, if your partner has never been in a long-term relationship, they may struggle with commitment.
Have you met their parents and friends? A person with commitment issues may refrain from including you in their family life. If they aren’t sure that you are here to stay, they may not want you to meet their family and close friends.
Are they willing to plan ahead? If your partner only plans for a couple of weeks or months ahead but refuses to make any long-term plans with you, they may be dealing with underlying commitment issues.
Do they tell you how they truly feel? An unwillingness to open up and talk about how they feel about you and the relationships is a common characteristic of commitment-phobes, so look out for that.

What Do You Do If Your Partner Has Commitment Issues?

Dealing with commitment phobia is no small feat. If you‘re in a relationship with a person struggling with commitment anxiety, it’s understandable that you may doubt the relationship and contemplate leaving it.

While breaking up may be the best course of action in some cases, you should keep in mind that a commitment-phobe probably desires emotional intimacy but has no idea how to change their ways. Here’s how you can try to deal with commitment issues in your relationship:

Give them some space. While you may be afraid of losing your partner, pressuring a commitment-phobe is never a good idea.
Be patient. If they truly love you, they will realize that they want to work on the relationship, even if it may take some time.
Be honest and show them that they can trust you. Many individuals who struggle with commitment are simply afraid of being hurt.
Try to understand why they are the way they are. If you make an effort to be understanding and attentive to your partner’s needs, they will probably appreciate it.
Don’t forget to care about yourself. All of this doesn’t mean that you should put your partner’s needs before your own. If your partner doesn’t want to work on themselves, don’t waste all of your energy on trying to change them.
Seek professional help. Commitment issues can be hard to deal with. Sometimes, the best course of action is to reach out to experienced relationship coaches for guidance.

Let The PIVOT Advocates Help!

Reaching out to seasoned relationship specialists is often the best path to take if you’re dealing with relationship problems. Our knowledgeable PIVOT Advocates rely on a curriculum built over 15 years that we call the PIVOT process, employing effective methods and techniques to help individuals struggling with personal and relational challenges.

Whether you want to try out couples or individual coaching for your relationship struggles or want to visit a relationship problems and solutions retreat that we offer at The Glass House, you’ve come to the right place. Reach out to us today and change your relationships for the better!

What Is Avoidance / Ambivalence Attachment?

Posted on July 28, 2024 by Lori Jean Glass

For some individuals, thinking about being in a relationship can activate feelings of wanting to run away. Why? Because they feel that the needs of a partner, family member, or employer are overwhelming.

Attachment theory explains the development of attachment styles, which are formed through early interactions with caregivers. Unfortunately, many individuals find themselves attracted to avoidant or ambivalent partners. These attachment styles can significantly influence adult relationships, often leading to a series of unhealthy patterns which cause a great deal of pain for both sides in the relationship. If this is the case with you and your partner, consider love avoidance coaching or intensive workshops which can give you the tools and resources you need to heal your attachment wounds.

Read on to learn more about love avoidance and ambivalence.

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What Is Avoidant Attachment?

Avoidant attachment is the inability and fear to show love. Individuals will carefully guard themselves when in relationships and avoid real intimacy… to protect themselves from rejection, loss and pain. Often they are not even aware of the behavior and it can be misunderstood as selfishness.

Unfortunately, denial and avoidance become habits, which keeps the individual from being seen, feeling connected and loved.

Paradoxically, the individual will often want more but will go outside the relationship to get what they want, because it feels safer.

The avoidant thinks first, then takes action, and then sometimes processes their feelings after the action. What happens next is sometimes regret, doubt, uncertainty, and/or confusion.

People with avoidance issues have difficulty trusting others and will distance themselves if a relationship feels too close. Experiences in early childhood are usually the cause of this, and they use avoidance to try to feel safe within an intimate relationship.

How Do You Know If You Have an Avoidant Attachment Style?

Do you think you or your partner have avoidance issues? That may be the case if you notice that you tend to be uncomfortable with intimacy in your relationship and have a way of escaping commitment when you start to feel stifled or suffocated.

If you worry your partner is avoidant, you may want to look for signs such as:

Not returning your texts or calls
Idealizing a past relationship
Sending mixed signals
Keeping secrets
Childish and sullen behavior
Showing mistrust
Escaping commitment

Of course, these are just some of the signs your partner may exhibit in your relationship. However, if you feel like most of these signs ring true, you may want to consider professional couple counseling or relationship therapy workshops.

Do Avoidants Fall In Love?

Despite the name, love avoidants actually crave love and affection, just like everyone else. However, they often exhibit insecure attachment styles due to their childhood wounds, making it more difficult for them to face disappointment and betrayal than other people. As a result, they tend to guard their feelings and do all they can to avoid being hurt in their relationships. They are not running away from love, they are running away from pain. In contrast, individuals with secure attachment styles are more likely to form healthy relationships and handle emotional challenges effectively.

Why Are Love Avoidants Attracted to Love Addicts?

Both love addicts and love avoidants often carry deeply ingrained fears and insecurities that stem from their childhood. On one hand, addicts crave affection and love that they rarely received from their parent or caregiver. Love avoidants, on the other hand, typically try to run from intimacy to avoid getting engulfed and hurt once again.

While the relationship may work initially, it is bound to come with its own set of challenges. As the love addict showers the avoidant with love and affection, the avoidant will inevitably start to pull away. The distancing of the avoidant will lead the addict to seek even more reassurance and affection as proof of the avoidant’s love. This cycle often repeats itself. This is what many refer to as a love addicted tango.

How Do You Deal With A Love Avoidant?

Being in a relationship with an avoidant partner can be extremely challenging, especially for a love addict. But despite the challenges, it is possible to create a deep connection with an avoidant, but only if they are willing to put in some effort, too. Here’s how you can improve your relationship with an avoidant partner:

Be patient and show your partner that they can trust you
Give your partner some space instead of chasing them
Keep in mind that their love avoidance is not your fault
Be understanding and dependable without overwhelming them
Learn the differences between the wants and needs for the relationship between you and your partner
Recognize your own unhealthy survival patterns
Set healthy boundaries
Don’t neglect your own needs

What Is Ambivalent Attachment?

Another way attachment shows up is if the individual is unavailable for intimacy. This means they are caught up in feeling anxious and also at times avoidant. This is the type of person that communicates “come here – go away”. This is known as being Ambivalent.

The ambivalent (or anxious avoidant) gets stuck in a prolonged cycle of thoughts and feelings, with little to no action. Freezing is the familiarity, even if it is painful, confusing, or exhausting.

The coping strategies that are avoidant or ambivalent which people use relate to creating an intensity in other activities outside the relationship, such as non-intimate sex, work, shopping, drugs and alcohol.

Among all of the attachment styles, ambivalent attachment seems to be the most chaotic. This is because ambivalent attachment tends to come from a childhood in which the parent or caregiver was inconsistent in providing love and affection. In another example- divorce between parents can create a separation and level of confusion for a child or adolescent. Imagine either parent sending completely different messages or signals to their children during their formative years and through their adolescence that conflict or are misaligned.

How Do You Know If You Have an Ambivalent Attachment Style?

Being ambivalent in your relationships or living with an ambivalent partner can be exhausting. If you’re worried that your partner has an ambivalent attachment style, look for the following traits:

Is your partner constantly critical or picky?
Do they have a history of short relationships?
Are they confused about what they want from the relationship?
Do they always seem distant or busy?
Are their actions unpredictable?
Are they hesitant to make long-term plans?

If you never feel sure of what your partner feels or thinks, it’s likely that you feel lost and confused about the nature of your relationship. If that’s the case, it would probably be a good idea to seek expert help if you want to salvage the relationship and improve your mental health.

Link Between Attachment Style And Depression

The Glass House Retreat helps avoidant and ambivalent individuals find their voice and use it.

When the avoidant or ambivalent behavior is defined and understood, it becomes a starting point to treat the underlying causes that create love avoidance. If this isn’t treated, then it often leads to depression.

When an individual has difficulty deciding whether to leave a relationship, this indecisiveness can lead to a combination of feeling anxious and depressed.

Why Is Attachment Important To Physical And Mental Health?

Avoidant and ambivalent attachment behaviors can significantly decrease the quality of your life, especially when it comes to your interpersonal relationships. In fact, the style of our attachment is a key factor in our physical and mental health. Here’s how:

The relationship with our caregivers will shape our intimate relationships and influence our adult attachment styles
Unhealthy attachment can result in difficulties with understanding our emotions.
In turn, we may struggle with relating to the emotions of other people.
Without healthy connections with others, we may struggle with anxiety and depression.
Our attachment style can make it hard to bounce back from disappointment and failure.

These attachment styles can affect adult relationships by influencing emotional behavior and partner dynamics. As you can see, your attachment style is a key factor in determining your personal relationships. Because of this, working on your attachment can be incredibly useful for improving your intimate relationships and overall wellbeing.

What Causes Love Avoidance and Ambivalence?

Individuals need love and connection with others. However, if you have suffered from feelings of abandonment or loss as a child, then you are likely to develop an insecure attachment style, which can lead to difficulty forming healthy attachments in adulthood, which can lead to avoidance or ambivalence.

Avoidance or ambivalence can also occur from experiencing abuse or neglect as a child from parents, siblings, other family members, teachers, coaches, bullies and friends.

If you’re wondering if you or a loved one has Avoidance behaviors, here are the most common signs and characteristics to look for.

Most Common Characteristics And Signs Of Avoidant Attachment

Individuals with an avoidant attachment style tend to exhibit a number of characteristic behaviors, including:

Avoid intimacy in the relationship by creating an intensity in other activities outside the relationship
Craving independence at all costs
Emotional withdrawal and bottling up emotions
Avoid being known in the relationship
Distance themselves from intimate contact to keep from feeling engulfed
Over-controlling parenting when young
Secretive behavior – hiding feelings
Need to be seen and adored and then escape
Refusal to acknowledge the existence of a problem
Tolerance for high-risk behavior
Denial that there is a problem

Most Common Characteristics And Signs Of Ambivalent Attachment

If you’re wondering if you or a loved one has Ambivalent behaviors, here are the most common signs and characteristics to look for:

They let other things outside of the relationship get in the way, i.e., hobbies, work, friends, lovers, addictions—anything.
Typically, they had one anxious and one avoidant parent attachment style
They have a “come here, go away” relational pattern
Crave love and fear it
Avoid intimacy by obsessing about love through romantic fantasies about unavailable people
They sexualize relationships such that emotional intimacy is non-existent and then become addicted to the sex or the relationship—often both.
They become addicted through romantic affairs rather than committed relationships
They struggle to open to a deeper level of emotional intimacy, and yet they are unable to let go of the relationship.

Can Avoidance or Ambivalence Be Treated?

YES!

The first step starts with being aware of and recognizing the symptoms. It is about healing yourself and being committed to being able to attach securely by knowing what you want and need in a relationship based on your personal storyline and background.

The process includes dealing with feelings and healing from past wounds. Healing allows you to reconnect to yourself with self-compassion and self-love.

We recommend that you seek support from professionals and talk about the pain that’s inside of you.

Remember, you are worthy of happiness and love and a healthy relationship. You can have relational freedom.

How can you deal with ambivalent or avoidant attachment?

Coping with their attachment style is a long and stressful process for most people. This is because we’re often unaware of the exact issues that stem from our relationship with our caregiver in our early childhood and finding out exactly how much it has affected us can be both eye-opening and terrifying.

The first step to overcoming your insecure attachment is to get acquainted with your past. Understanding exactly how you became the person you are now can help you accept and reconcile with your childhood experiences.

This is best done through professional therapy and attending different workshops and programs designed to help you improve your relationships and your overall well being. But if you want to take some steps on your own, here’s what you should do:

Start by identifying your emotions and expressing your needs without fear.
Strive to be as authentic in your communication as possible.
Combat your shame and work on your self-esteem.
Try not to criticize yourself and accept your flaws.
Work on compromising and seeing your partner’s perspective.

Of course, these are just some of the steps you can take to start on your path to recovery. In addition to these general coping techniques, you should also seek professional support if you want to improve your relationships and the quality of your life.

How To Overcome Insecure Attachment: Our Love Avoidance Intensive Workshops Can Help!

We provide support and healing for these individuals by providing a personal PIVOT coach or coming to The Glass House and taking a 5-day deep dive into the PIVOT process. We provide defining attachment styles, one on one sessions, group process and experiential therapies to encourage individuals to be seen, respected, and understood.

In addition, we offer intensive programs designed to repair and restore relational challenges. Learn more about the PIVOT process and our programs. We’re here to help.

What Are Your Survival Patterns in Relationships?

Posted on March 13, 2020October 27, 2024 by Lori Jean Glass

Do you use survival patterns… and not even know it?

What Are Survival Patterns?

They are skills you develop to help you navigate your emotional pain. These patterns, often referred to as love styles, help you manage and tolerate the feelings you have.

Survival patterns tend to show up when you have some unresolved emotional trauma.

Unfortunately, survival patterns don’t always serve you.

How Your Childhood Affects Your Love Style

To help you see if you do have patterns and show you how traumas create negative patterns in relationships, let me share my story.

I was born into a beautiful family. My parents loved each other, and this love flowed to my older sister, Joy Ann and myself. For the first couple of years of my life, I felt loved, wanted and cared for.

I felt happy and secure, especially with my father.

Then, when I was a toddler, tragedy struck.

My father drowned in a canoeing accident at the coaching camp we attended together.

He was in a canoe with another coach and two basketball players. They were joking around, splashing water on each other. And then my father fell out of the canoe. He never resurfaced.

It took a long time to find his body.

That day changed my life forever.

From that moment onwards, my mom checked out due to grief. She shut down. Worse still, the doctors told her that she should start drinking a couple of glasses of wine each night, to help her sleep.

She started with two, but this quickly grew to eight glasses… and developed into alcoholism.

At the age of four, I essentially lost both parents.

My mother was a beautiful woman and soon after my father died, she met a man in a bar. She remarried within six months.

My stepfather had no idea what he was signing up for. He began to control our environment because my Mom had lost control. It felt like he took her away from me. For the first time in my life, I had feelings of jealousy.

To deal with this I started to develop survival patterns, or skills to deflect the emotional pain I was feeling. The survival pattern I developed was secretive behavior.

And one of the secretive habits was stealing my stepfather’s peanuts. This helped me feel in control when everything around me had been lost.

I wanted to feel like something was mine.

I was only five, and I remember taking six to eight peanuts at a time. I knew if I took more than ten, he would notice and yell at me. This level of detail was a result of the trauma that I had early in my life.

Stealing peanuts was a silent way to control my emotional pain.

It was my way of rebelling against someone who took away my mother and started her alcoholism – or so my five-year-old self thought.

Does Childhood Trauma Ever Go Away?

Survival patterns typically remain the same in our adulthood. When my inner child was activated in my adult life, then I would once again turn to my secretive behavior as a survival pattern.

I would secretly go out on a quest to obtain something that I could take and claim as mine.

I developed these secretive behaviors because I felt abandoned as a child and wanted to have something of my own.

When I was a teenager, I’d steal clothes, so no one would know how screwed up things were at home.

When I was an adult, I continued being secretive by hiding my feelings and trying to control the outcomes in relationships.

Today, when I work with my clients as a relationship coach, I see them incorporating survival patterns to manage and tolerate their feelings. Feelings that trace back to their childhood.

They continue using the same love styles to cope in their adult lives.

The result… the drama continues, and the past trauma continues to get activated, even in situations where it’s not reasonable to have intense emotions.

It’s important to consider how your survival patterns are still showing up today and to see how they negatively impact your adult relationships.

What Is Your Survival Pattern?

See if you recognize any of these patterns below:

The Avoider Love Style

If you’re an avoider, you’re probably sensitive to criticism, rejection, and failure.

You may try to escape getting hurt by making yourself smaller or invisible.

You live within your controllable comfort zone, but you criticize yourself before anyone else can do this to you. You are constantly on the lookout for signs of judgment, criticism or danger.

As an avoider, you remove yourself from relationships where you have the risk of getting hurt.

The Pleaser Love Style

As a pleaser, you may believe that to avoid getting rejected or abandoned, you need to please everyone, making sure that everyone is “ok” with you.

As a pleaser you may have a role, such as:

The caretaker – you may feel very responsible for others;
The chameleon – you can fit in everywhere;
The joker – you try to win people over by being fun and the life of the party.

Whichever role you take, it’s all about putting others first.

As a child you may have grown up keeping the peace by helping. And as an adult you feel burnt out and unfulfilled. As a pleaser your sense of self-worth and safety depends on the approval of others.

The Controller Love Style

As a controller you feel you need to dominate people and situations. You may feel that you need to control outcomes in relationships, as well as every aspect of your life.

You may even take on the role of being the authority so you can enforce your ideas and rules on others, just to avoid feeling exposed, powerless and unsafe.

By controlling others, you feel more empowered and secure. However, underneath this you may have deep feelings of inferiority, vulnerability and pain, which trace back to traumas from your childhood.

The Achiever Love Style

Are you known as a go-getter, the one who achieves a lot? And who always exceeds everyone’s expectations?

Do you strive for the next achievement, never taking time to enjoy what you just accomplished?

Do you sometimes call yourself a perfectionist? And can’t accept mediocrity?

Your identity and self-worth are defined by your successes because your self-esteem comes through achievement. However, although you achieve goals, deep inside you may still have the fear of not being good enough, which motivates you to keep achieving.

This may lead to you feeling burnt out, empty, or unfulfilled. The result is that your relationships may suffer.

How Do I Overcome My Survival Pattern?

These survival patterns are your “go-to,” but you’ll see that most of the actions and behaviors no longer serve you. And they ultimately stop you from creating healthy relationships with other adults.

It’s not easy to change your behavior because it’s ingrained in your relationship dynamics. This makes it challenging for you to develop healthy emotional intimacy with your partner.

The first step is to be aware of your old patterns. See what triggers it. Early childhood relationships are the first place to look to identify survival patterns.

The next step is to know what your core wound is. Search your history to see what childhood trauma is unresolved. And GET HELP.

My core wound is abandonment and not feeling good enough. As a child, I constantly feared that I would be left.

The good news is that no matter what survival pattern you have, it doesn’t mean you’ve got this for life.

Let An Experienced Relationship Coach Help!

If you are committed to change, then you’re not stuck with your unhealthy love style forever. Instead, you need to be open to change and find a relationship expert to talk about the pain that’s inside of you and learn how to love yourself first.

Relationship coaching can also help you if you can’t seem to accept love or need help dealing with being ignored, as well as with a whole range of other issues. Remember you are worthy of happiness and love, and a healthy relationship.

Looking for a relationship coach online? If you are ready to create meaningful connections and overcome addictive relationships, then contact PIVOT. We offer effective relationship issues workshops at The Glass House, as well as transformative individual relationship coaching. We’re here to help.

What Role Does Self-Love Play In Your Life?

Posted on February 25, 2020October 27, 2024 by Lori Jean Glass

For many people, self-love means occasionally treating yourself to an expensive piece of clothing or dedicating a night just to yourself. However, the true feeling of self-love is something that you should build and nurture throughout your life.

In fact, one of the first steps in accepting love from others is learning how to love and appreciate yourself. Only by understanding and embracing your inner self can you build strong, intimate relationships and be at peace with others.

Unfortunately, in today’s fast-paced society, people are often swept up in other people’s emotions, personal goals, and constant feelings of self-criticism. Consequently, this can lead to serious mental health issues, including depression and anxiety, as well as relationship problems such as a lack of emotional intimacy with your partner. This is why individual coaching for relationship issues often includes working on self-acceptance, self-esteem, and other aspects of self-growth.

What It Means To Love Yourself

It’s not unusual for people to either completely neglect themselves or mistaken self-love for selfishness and egocentrism. Some even believe that self-love is a shallow concept often propagated in commercial purposes.

However, self-love is so much more than this. While this feeling and attitude toward oneself may have different meanings for various individuals, it’s typically described as self-compassion, self-appreciation, and self-respect.

Of course, loving yourself requires you to first gain a deeper insight into your own mind and feelings, understand your personal behaviors and decisions, and learn how to accept your mistakes. By truly embracing your inner self, you will learn how to be gentle to yourself and your emotions instead of striving for perfection or criticizing yourself for every mistake.

Common characteristics of self-love

In general, self-love is characterized by the following features:

Mindfulness. When you love yourself, you don’t have to burden yourself with past mistakes or spend time thinking about what you could have done differently. Mindfulness also entails being aware of your emotions and thoughts free from judgment and self-criticism.
Forgiveness. Self-love also enables you to forgive yourself and others and move forward. You can understand the reasons behind your and others’ actions or mistakes.
Acceptance. After learning to accept yourself, you will be able to accept others too, including their flaws.
Self-focus. Whether you’re in a relationship or not, self-love inspires and motivates you to keep working on your growth. You’re also not ashamed to put yourself before others sometimes and dedicate attention to yourself, not solely your partner.
Intimacy. Loving your mind, body, and inner self enables you to establish healthier, stronger, and more intimate relationships. You feel comfortable opening up to your partner and don’t see vulnerability in your relationship as a weakness.

Why Is It Important To Love And Respect Yourself?

You’ve probably heard numerous variations of the phrase “you first have to love yourself in order to love others” a countless number of times. Even couples and individuals who join relationship building skills workshops first need to address personal issues and behaviors before working on their relationships.

However, you still may be wondering why this is so important. In fact, a certain dose of healthy self-criticism may even benefit your growth and relationship with others. So, why does self-love play such an important role in your life?

Here are several reasons why self-love and self-respect are the foundation of establishing a positive relationship with yourself and others:

You are not afraid to stand up for yourself.
You build and strengthen your self-esteem.
You don’t grow resentment for your partner.
You never lose yourself in your relationships.
You have more compassion for yourself and others.
You don’t spend time comparing yourself to or envying others.
You are likely to see the world from a more positive perspective.
You make decisions that can benefit you mentally and physically.

Why Is Self-Love So Difficult?

However, even if you fully understand the importance of self-love and self-respect in your life, sometimes nothing seems more difficult than letting go of perfectionist goals, past mistakes and regrets, self-criticism, and other feelings and attitudes that damage your self-esteem and sabotage your relationships.

There are multiple reasons behind this even if you may not be fully aware of them. They include:

Past experiences. Your previous experiences have shaped you as a person, so it’s extremely difficult to leave certain traumas behind. The past often leaves individuals believing that they are unworthy of love and exposing themselves to constant self-criticism.
Perfectionism. Whether in personal relationships or work, perfectionism can hinder your efforts to love yourself. When you fail to meet perfectionist, unrealistic expectations, the first person to blame is typically you. In fact, it has been shown that perfectionism can lead to serious problems such as anxiety, depression, eating disorders, IBS, etc.
Conflicts. Interpersonal conflicts may leave you questioning yourself and what you have done wrong. This is particularly common if you enter a conflict with a person who cannot or doesn’t want to understand your side and often blames you for everything that goes wrong in your relationship.
Selfishness. Some people believe that they’re being selfish and egotistical if they put themselves before others or expressing their feelings and needs. However, you shouldn’t feel guilty if you love yourself. This will allow you to be a better person toward others, too.

How Do You Love Yourself?

Although it is difficult to change well-established behaviors and attitudes, you can learn how to love yourself. Here are a few practices of self-love that you can introduce to your life:

Practice mindfulness. Learning how to be present and aware of your current feelings and thoughts is truly liberating. You can forget about the past and focus on the present. The key to mindfulness is observing your thoughts and emotions without any judgment. Try to understand why you feel the way you do without criticizing yourself for it.
Understand and focus on your needs. Ask yourself what it is that you really need rather than want or hope for. Try to consider your life and personal goals and decide what you need to achieve them. This goes for everyday habits and decisions, too.
Know when to say “no”. Don’t be afraid to say no to people. Don’t spend yourself trying to please others, but focus on what you can do for yourself. Of course, this doesn’t mean neglecting others’ feelings and needs but simply learning to set certain boundaries in your relationships.
Embrace healthy habits. Pay more attention to your nutrition and physical activity. The body and the mind are intertwined and you cannot love one without the other. Additionally, quality sleep, healthy nutrition, and exercise are essential for combatting anxiety, depression, and other mental health problems.
Consider a problem from different perspectives. It’s easy to feel discouraged by certain problems and challenges in your life. However, instead of blaming yourself or believing you’re not strong enough to overcome them, try to see how you can grow using this invaluable life experience.

How Does Loving Yourself Change Your Life?

Working on self-love and personal growth will truly enrich your life, affecting its every aspect, including interpersonal relationships. By embracing yourself and implementing practices that support self-love, you will notice an array of changes in your life:

Higher self-esteem. When you love yourself for who you are, you are able to maintain a healthy level of self-esteem. You won’t compare yourself to others and will learn to appreciate your own personality, body, and mind. Stronger self-esteem will improve your life in general, as you will see yourself as a strong, capable person who can achieve their life goals and find the happiness they deserve.
Stronger relationships. After learning to love and accept yourself, loving and understanding others will be much easier. You and your partner will have a stronger, more open and honest relationship that won’t be sabotaged by your personal insecurities.
Enhanced overall health. The mind and the body are closely connected. So, a more loving, positive attitude toward yourself will reflect on your mental and physical health. You will be more inclined to take care of yourself and your personal needs, minimizing the risk of experiencing health problems and developing unhealthy habits.
Personal motivation. With more self-love in your life, you will be more motivated and inspired to pursue your life goals. You’ll believe in yourself more and be more resolute to realize your potential.
More control over your life. By getting in touch with your inner self and learning to accept it, you will feel more in control over your life. You will have the strength to change the things you don’t like, see challenges as an opportunity and face problems instead of withdrawing to yourself.

Individual Coaching for Relationship Issues: Start Your Journey Toward Self-Love

Self-love is at the core of your self-improvement and personal relationships. However, silencing that inner voice that has been telling you that you aren’t good enough or that you don’t deserve love for years is truly challenging. You may be even sabotaging your relationship with your partner without even being aware that the issues stem from your personal dissatisfaction and deeply ingrained survival patterns.

Here at PIVOT, we will help you not only address these issues but also apply high-result solutions to resolve them. Whether you want to work on yourself or improve your relationship building skills, our carefully devised process and workshops will help you identify the underlying negative patterns, take steps to modify them, and learn how to build a more loving, understanding relationship with yourself and others.

With us, you can join intensive workshops for personal growth at the Glass House or achieve progress through individual coaching with a PIVOT Coach. We give you an opportunity to not only identify the problem and its cause but also intensively work on altering well-established behaviors. Get the support & professional guidance you need with us!

Does Love Make The World Go Round?

Posted on February 25, 2020October 27, 2024 by Lori Jean Glass

All you need is love. Whether that is true or not, there’s no denying that most of us need and seek love in order to feel happy and complete. But how much do we really know about love? Is love all we need in a relationship? Do we have any control over who and how much we love?

Whether you wish to learn how to love yourself or find out why you are afraid of love, seeking information from an experienced relationship coach is possibly the best course of action. In this article, we will approach love from a number of angles in order to shed light on its nature and importance in our relationships. Read on!

Can A Relationship Survive On Love Alone?

Most of us are taught to believe in the importance of love, whether from our parents, movies, or literature. How come then that we see so many relationships fall apart even though love is very much still there? Is it possible that love isn’t all we need to make a relationship work?

Unfortunately, it is entirely possible to love someone who isn’t the right person for us. In fact, there are many situations in which love alone may not be enough.

When Love Is Not Enough

No matter how much we love, our relationships can still fall apart. While love may conquer all in some situations, here are some relationship struggles that even love may not be able to resolve:

You can love the wrong person. Your partner might not be right for you. They may be abusive, your relationship may lack intimacy, or you may just be too similar or too different. No matter the reason, it’s entirely possible to truly love a person who isn’t good for us.
It’s possible to love someone at the wrong time. You may love someone to the moon and back, but feel like you should end the relationship because you’re not ready to embrace it at the present moment. Sometimes, the timing is just not right.
You and your partner may have conflicting values. While it’s perfectly normal to be with someone who has different beliefs than you do, you may want to consider leaving the relationship if you and your partner keep fighting over your conflicting values.
Your partner may not reciprocate. Can true love be one-sided? Certainly, but that doesn’t mean that such a relationship is healthy. If you feel like your partner doesn’t love you as much as you love them, the relationship may not be the one for you.
Your friends and family may disapprove. Although it might sound like a Romeo and Juliet scenario, it’s quite common for family members to disapprove of a relationship. Sometimes, they have a good reason to do so, even though love is very much there.

Is Love A Choice Or A Feeling?

Falling in love is easy for most of us. It may even feel effortless, almost like there’s nothing we can do about it. Staying in love, on the other hand, is a different story entirely. In reality, love is more of a choice than a feeling. By this, we mean that we have to consciously decide to stay committed to a single person when the initial butterflies disappear.

Every single day, we have to make conscious choices to love or not to love a person. We may face serious fights or be incredibly annoyed by our partner’s habits, and still choose to love them and stay in the relationship. It is these choices we make on a regular basis that show our love, not the fleeting feelings we have when we start dating. So, while we may not exactly choose who we love, we definitely can choose who we keep loving when the going gets tough.

Can You Love Someone Too Much?

The short answer would be: no, there’s no such thing as loving someone too much. However, it is possible to smother someone with affection. Oftentimes, this is done out of selfish reasons. When we love a person, we wish them to be happy even though their idea of happiness may be different from our own. Smothering, on the other hand, means prioritizing your own needs over your partner’s.

Of course, if you feel like your partner isn’t giving you enough attention or that your relationship is one-sided, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you are smothering them if you insist on seeking emotional closeness with them. Here’s what smothering in a relationship typically looks like.

Signs of Emotional Suffocation

If you worry that you may be emotionally suffocating your partner, here are some signs you should look out for:

You always wish to know where they are. If you keep texting your partner constantly, wanting to keep track of their whereabouts at all times, it’s quite possible that you’re smothering them.
You never leave their side. Sometimes, it’s best to leave the person you love alone. We all have days when we wish to have some time to ourselves or go and see our childhood friends. Insisting on following your partner’s every step is a sure sign of emotional suffocation.
You never disagree with your partner. While you may want to show your partner how much you love them by appreciating their ideas, you shouldn’t agree with every single thing they say just to impress them. Most of the time, you’ll achieve the opposite effect.
You don’t feel comfortable alone. Most of the time, we seek emotional closeness with others because we feel insecure and need reassurance. If you can’t be on your own, you may have some low self-esteem or abandonment wounds and survival patterns that need your attention.
They tell you they feel suffocated. Naturally, if your partner tells you they feel smothered in the relationship, you should take their word for it. The best course of action would be to have a serious discussion about the issue and see what can be done to resolve it.

Visit our effective couples retreat relationship workshop

At PIVOT, we work hard in order to help couples and individuals with their relationship struggles. It is our mission to enable you to heal your past wounds and work on happier, healthier relationships with the ones you love the most.

Our knowledgeable PIVOT Advocates will offer effective and transformative solutions to your relationship problems. We offer both couples and individual coaching for your relationships as well as effective five-day workshops at The Glass House. Give us a call today and start your journey toward a healthier emotional life!

Does Your Relationship Lack Emotional Intimacy?

Posted on February 25, 2020 by Lori Jean Glass

Being romantically involved with another human being implies intimacy. Most of us place great importance on physical intimacy, and rightfully so, but there is also a whole other aspect of intimacy that is closely linked to the physical one: emotional intimacy.

At first, it is physical intimacy that we might pay more attention to, especially when we’re infatuated and consumed by a fiery passion for each other. But emotional intimacy is what remains when the honeymoon phase is over and that initial excitement of being madly in love starts to wear out.

When partners lack emotional intimacy in their relationship, they cannot face and overcome conflict and life’s challenges together. Are you dealing with emotional intimacy issues in your relationship? Are you seeing or ignoring the red flags? Learn to recognize the telltale signs.

What does emotional intimacy feel like?

When two partners have emotional intimacy, they have a deep emotional connection. They feel close because they feel free to be themselves around each other and express their feelings openly without being afraid to show their vulnerable side.

What does a lack of intimacy do to a relationship?

Without intimacy at a deeper level, building trust turns into a difficult challenge which could ultimately spell trouble for the future of your whole relationship. Partners who can’t trust each other cannot stay together.

So what are the signs that there are issues with intimacy between you and your partner?

Signs that your relationship lacks emotional intimacy:

Feeling distant and isolated from your partner

If you feel that you can never quite pinpoint what the other person is thinking or how they’re feeling, there may be a distance between you. This can turn into a major problem when conflicts arise, especially if your partner is giving you the silent treatment, making conflict resolution all the more difficult.

Lack of transparency and communication about emotions

When we say that communication between partners is key, it may sound like a cliché, but that doesn’t make it any less true. Partners who can communicate their feelings to each other have managed to build emotional intimacy. On the other hand, partners who never discuss their emotions but get into petty arguments all the time are probably not looking at a bright future together.

Imbalance in the degree of sharing

If one person is sharing too much and the other is not sharing enough, it might seem that the other partner is simply a good listener. On the other hand, it may mean that there is an imbalance. The partner who shares less might not feel comfortable enough to express their thoughts and feelings openly.

Inability to listen to each other

Sharing your views, thoughts, and opinions with each other and being able to open up and reveal your feelings and emotions must mean that you have built emotional intimacy, right? Not necessarily. In order to continue to build your emotional intimacy, both partners in a relationship need to practice active listening and show empathy and compassion on an ongoing basis.

If one partner tends to zone out when the other partner is talking about what they’re going through, this might mean the emotional intimacy between them is starting to fade. At this point, partners might start hurting each other indeliberately by forgetting the little things or showing disregard for the other person’s feelings. Little by little, they may start drifting apart.

Lack of support for each other

People in supportive relationships tend to open up with each other about what’s bothering them. Because their relationship is built on trust and understanding, the partner is their go-to person whenever they’re in need of guidance. They feel comfortable enough to ask their partner for help and advice. But in a relationship that lacks emotional intimacy, partners may lack the emotional security to turn to each other for support.

Leading separate lives could indicate a lack of intimacy

Partners who are private and refuse to share information about their lives with each other might be dealing with an emotional distance. It’s fine to lead separate lives and be independent, but keeping a deliberate distance from each other could be a sign of a deeper problem. After all, patterns like long phone calls, texting or talking face-to-face help us get to know each other, and sharing your daily life is a big part of that.

You no longer share similar interests and hobbies

The experiences we share with our partners help us grow as a couple. Whether it’s going to the farmers’ market, cooking a meal or watching black-and-white movies together, these activities help build intimacy and deepen your relationship bond.

When you stop doing the things you used to do with your partner, whether because you no longer care about their likes and interests or because they no longer care about yours, it should really tip you off that emotional intimacy may have started to dissipate and might disappear altogether.

Avoidance of physical closeness

Although a couple that has active sex life is not necessarily in a healthy, supportive relationship, frequent sex is known to benefit couples, both in the emotional and in the physical sense, whereas lack of sex increases the relationship’s vulnerability to detachment. But avoidance of physical touch can happen even to couples who are physically intimate in the bedroom on a regular basis.

When couples have a strong emotional connection, this is manifested in physical closeness. Partners are comfortable touching each other outside the bedroom, whether it’s by holding hands, hugging or kissing, as this is how they express their emotional intimacy.

On the other hand, partners who are reserved and have physical connection issues might be dealing with emotional intimacy issues as well.

Can a relationship survive without emotional intimacy?

When you love someone deeply, you might be willing to overlook any emotional intimacy issues, even put the other person’s needs first to keep the romance alive. But sometimes love alone isn’t enough. Your relationship might last even if you lack emotional intimacy and connection, but is that really what you both want?

You both deserve to have a meaningful relationship that makes you feel loved and fulfilled. Does that mean you are doomed as a couple? Absolutely not. Building emotional intimacy is no easy feat, but it’s not impossible. Some couples may try to work everything out by themselves by working on their communication, while others decide to turn to experts for help.

How to improve intimacy in a relationship? We can help!

Building emotional intimacy is hard work, but that’s just it: you can work on it. If both you and your partner are willing to make it work, we can help you build trust and improve emotional intimacy in one of our workshops that rely on relationship intimacy coaching.

Would you feel more at ease in our individual coaching program or do you think it’s time you give our intensive workshops at The Glass House a go? It’s up to you but one thing is certain: PIVOT Advocates are here for you. We’re ready to help you patch things up with your partner and learn to deal with the intimacy problems in your relationship before they escalate. We’re your key to building healthier relationships.

It’s time to turn the page and the PIVOT process is the way to do it!