Staying Healthy With Healing Relationships - Spiritual Growth To Enlightenment

From a holistic perspective, when you are not feeling well, it may be as relevant to examine all your relationships – with your spouse, children, family members or work colleagues, as it is to check out your diet, body or personal hygiene.

Lonny J. Brown

Healing – Personal to Planetary

Hurting Or Healing?

Are your relationships healing or hurting? Relationships are like the food that you consume. They can be nourishing, pleasurable and healing. On the other hand they can become acidic and toxic. Relationships can cause much stress – both positive and negative. Indeed, ailing relationships are the major cause of much stress-related illness.

The key to keep to good relationships is successful communications. Too often breakdown occurs because of a misunderstanding or what is left unspoken. We fear speaking our minds, showing our emotions or simply lacking the interpersonal skills to make ourselves understood.

In today’s high-pressured fast paced lives, we tend to ignore the human component in our relationships. As a consequence, we end up investing time with the people around us. People get treated as objects or projects. Relationships as a result lack the richness and depth that human craves so much for. When you think about it, nobody is really wrong but everybody ends up feeling wronged.

Broken Relationships

The signs are telling: relationships are hurting, more and more marriages are ending up on the rocks, families are crumbling, children are increasingly rebelling, work relationships are vile and manipulative, people resort to verbal and physical abuse even without being provoked. All this is taking its toll: stress levels are high at the home and work place, more and more people are making psychiatric visits, insomnia is on the rise, sales of drugs to treat anxiety and depression are on the increase and a host on new ‘psychosomatic diseases’ are being diagnosed. In these affluent times, we are doing better but feeling worse.

Is there no solution? Is the human race doomed? Surely there must be some way to cope with this disparity. Here are some guideline that should apply equally lovers, kids, parents, spouses and even co-workers.

Do not postpone talking: Old hurts are like cancer. They have a way of growing insidiously. Keep up to date. Schedule “heart-to-heart” talks into your routine regularly.

Begin on common ground: Seek way where you can mutually support each other. Work on getting and keeping good intentions. Seeking a common ground takes the stress away immediately. It gives the other party a chance to get back into the playing field and start working together without having to admit defeat or swallow pride. Wars could be averted if only the parties concerned sought to find common ground.

Let me furnish you with a personal example. The neem capsules that we launched recently took of spectacularly. It meant that we were out of stock. That was not good. This along with some glaring slip-ups from our distributor caused a lot of problems in the marketplace. Many of you out there went looking for the product and expressed frustrations when it could not be found. The pharmacists were not happy with us. In the thick of all this, I went down to the lady in charge of order processing. Her team was wrong but so were we. The normal thing to do would be to assign blame. That would only make matter worse and cause more stress.

We choose to focus on ‘unhappy customers’ – common ground. I told her that we had to work to win back these customers. That removed the stress and self defense usually associated with situations like this. With the guard down we could work together and get doing immediately.

If you look hard enough, there will always be. In many failing marriages, children are common ground. If both parents could work on this, many marriages could be saved.

Come to small agreements: Forget the big issues. There may be too much at stake. Even agreeing the sit and talk or simply setting an agenda could be big breakthroughs. Even the most experienced negotiators will tell you that having the other party say “Yes” early for even simple thing can have a big positive bearing on the outcome.

Active listening: This is not easy to put into practice. It takes great skill and discipline. Tell yourself that you will not start taking until you are absolutely clear as to the position of the other party. You must open your heart and listen as the other talks. Postpone your talking. The creator gave us one mouth and two ears. If you are into active listening you have got to listen and talk in that proportion. Listen for the tone of the voice.

Makes eye contact: ‘Listen’ with your eyes. Look into the other person’s eyes with curiosity and respect. You are talking to another human being! Never forget that! Watch for body language. Look at the facial expressions. Psychologists tell us that up to eighty percent of all communication is non-verbal. In other words by simply listening, you miss out on eighty percent of the intended message.

After you have listened, restate what you think you have heard and get the other party to agree (again a small agreement!). For example, you could say something like, “If I understand you right, you are saying…”

Communicate with the heart: Use a lot of “I feel” messages. Communicate your own needs. Speak softly and sweetly. Never put the other party on the defense. It will only provoke an attack – direct or indirect. Never point an accusing finger.

Create a trust atmosphere: Show trust. Maintain trust. People are more likely to compromise if they trust you.

Deal with anger: Do not overindulge in anger. It has been shown to be bad for your health. Anger can actually precipitate a heart attack. A good rule: control yourself, not others.

Aim for “win-win”: I used to think that “win-win” was a buzzword. Both parties in the deal should look at wining together. It seemed a favoured option versus “win-lose” or “lose-win”.

It was only after I read Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People, did this phrase take on a new meaning. Dr. Covey writes that you have another option – no deal. “Seek to “win-win” do not deal” is his advise. Wow! How wonderful? It really puts the power to choose in all human relationships especially if they are long term. You do not have to lose. The other person does not have to lose either. It is not a zero sum game where only one party wins. You can both win or you can both choose not to deal.

Take space : Too much togetherness can be suffocating. Absence can make the heart fonder. It can actually be healing. Take time out. Restore your soul in solitude. Take time to recreate yourself. Come back charged and wiser. It could be enriching to the relationship.

Get help : In these stressful times, it is no sign of weakness or failure to seek professional help or guidance. Seek the support of someone you can both trust. Get professional help, if you have difficulties that you cannot cope. A good therapist can act as a mirror and a catalyst for positive change.

To Hurt Or To Heal

Building better and deeper relationships is an ongoing challenge. It is not always easy but like cooking delicious and healthy meals, it is well worth the effort. In all human communications, the power to deal should be with you. Relationships can either hurt or heal. It is really up to you.

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