How to Create Depth and Connection in Relationships: Part I

[Intro] Hello, and welcome to my podcast, Empowered to Thrive. I'm so glad you joined me today. I'm your host, Corinne Powell.

I help people pleasers find happiness, embrace courage, and experience peace of mind through inner child healing. If you're desperate for change and not sure how to make it happen, I'm here to guide you along the way. In this space, you'll find motivation to live a life full of joy and resilience.

We will talk all things inner wellness with spirituality interwoven at times. Being a mom to three, parenting will be a topic of conversation for sure. So happy to have you.

Enjoy today's episode. 

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Hey, everybody. I am so happy you're here with me. And I'm really excited to talk about how we can create more depth and connection in our relationships. I'm going to touch on parenting and relating with our children. But let me just confidently tell you that this is a message for all of us to create depth and connection within all of our relationships.

So let's get to it. How to create more depth and connection in our relationships. In life, we all experience some sort of dysfunction. And then there are those of us that have trauma or tragedy that marks our life or marks certain seasons of our lives. 

In those experiences, we learn how to cope. We manage through them and sometimes it becomes an unhealthy, toxic way of managing. Now there is no shame in that. But here's what I want to say. We don't have to live that way all of our life long.

I learned how to people please. From a very young age, I learned that if I just did what was right, if I just didn't express how I really felt, then I could keep the peace. Then I would be safe. Then my world would feel a little bit better at the expense of losing myself. I lost my sense of self. I didn't express my opinion how I really felt because where would that land me? 

Would people get upset with me? Would they be disappointed in me? Would I feel their judgment? And I knew I wanted to avoid that at all costs because unconsciously, there's a little kid inside of me that knew how horrible that felt when she was a little girl.

So then there's those, don't people please, but they tend to fight. And if something is not going well, they are going to anger and rage and fight against it. And if we match their anger and we fight, we will not get depth and connection with them.

We will push them away and we will not create a space where they feel safe. So what I've learned, especially in parenting one of my kids, I have a child who tends to people please. I have a child who tends to fight and I have a child who tends to flee.

My child who tends to fight, I've learned I have to create an environment where that child feels safe to express how they're feeling underneath the anger, because there's probably some disappointment, some sadness, grieving, some loss. There are other emotions underneath anger. Anger just masks what's going on deeper.

And it's a way of protecting the self from anybody getting in and hurting more. So I create an environment where this child knows what they have to say matters. Their feelings are valid.

I don't have to agree with somebody's feelings to validate that that's how they're feeling. And that you don't have to either. Thankfully, you don't have to agree with everybody to validate that's how they feel and how they feel should be acknowledged.

Remember too, feelings are not bad or good. They're indicators of what's going on deeper inside of us. To be angry is okay.

What we do with our anger, that can become a problem. That can be where it goes down. But to have anger is just anger. It's just an emotion. It's just the energy inside of us. 

To feel sad is okay. But why do we feel sad? Sometimes you feel sad, you recognize what you lost, and you actually then feel better once you've acknowledged and felt the sadness. But remember, sadness is not a bad thing. Even being overly excited, sometimes that scares people and it freaks them out a little bit.

But these are just emotions. Emotions don't come in a package with a pretty bow on top. They're messy.

They're complicated. But they're also beautiful. They create so much beauty in life.

And I love to welcome and embrace emotions. So for the fighter, remember, it's not going to work to match their fight. What could help is recognizing, understanding, empathizing, validating what they're saying, and helping them to even understand what they're feeling.

And then there's the person who might flee. For that person, they need to know there's a safe place to come to. It doesn't mean you have to run after them and tackle them and say, I love you and I'm here.

Remember, sometimes my child that runs off to their room, I go and I say I'm here when you're ready. Or sometimes I sit with them on their bed and if they say they don't want me to touch them, like they don't want me to put my hand on their back, then I won't. I'm not hurt by that.

I get it. They're expressing they want space. And I want my kids to express themselves.

I want my children to know that they can say something to me and I can be okay. They don't need to control me and I don't need to control them. And that's not to say that I don't struggle with that.

Sometimes I struggle. I want to help my kids so much that I try to control how they respond. But I'm working in a way to get myself to a place where I can just let them be.

So helping the person who wants to flee to know they have a safe place they can come to, they can express themselves. And even if you have something to say because you're triggered that creates some conflict there, you can acknowledge, hey, you know, I've got some things that I'm triggered in, but I want you to know that you're still safe to express yourself and you're loved and I care about you. And when you're ready, I want to give you a hug.

And when you're ready, I want to talk about it. And just basically across the board, people need to know to create more depth and connection in our relationships. People need to know that you care, that you validate and acknowledge what they're feeling.

You recognize their feelings and you're not trying to change them. To make people become what you want them to become doesn't usually produce anything that's good and long lasting. Because if they do conform to what you want, they're just pleasing you.

We want to create relationships. I'm sorry. You may not want to create a relationship, but I want to create relationships that people know they're safe.

They can let their guard down and what they say is not going to bite them in the butt. That they can come and be their true self and it's going to be okay. I can disagree with them and let them hold their opinion.

I can come to the place where their stuff doesn't affect me negatively. Remember, if somebody else's stuff is affecting you and making you feel ucky, you're being triggered. It's not necessarily them.

What they're saying is reminding you of something you've experienced in the past, or it's triggering a belief you think about yourself or about life and it's making you feel that uncomfortable sort of way. 

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[Ending] I just want to close out the episode by saying that triggering is real. Sometimes someone has done something that's causing you deep hurt and that is so valid.

And then other times the pain is actually compounded because of past experiences and trauma. That's what I mean by triggering. Something feels worse to you because actually it's not only what's happening in the present moment, it's compounding what's happened already to you in your lifetime.

Now if there is anything I've shared in today's episode that you want to talk more about, I would be glad to connect with you. Look in the show notes for more ways to connect with me, but I just want to drop here that you can always find me on Instagram at @corinne_changeradically⁠ or through my website changeradically.com. Until next week, wishing you the best.