(Stillness in the Storm Editor) It takes courage to build healthy relationships because trust is the foundation for harmonious interaction. In order to build trust, you have to be willing to risk something. In relationships, we risk the softest parts of us, our inner self, what some call the inner child. It takes courage to be authentic when you aren’t sure how another will react. But without doing so, you can’t truly trust another, which leads to toxicity for you and the world.
Humans are both animal and more than animal. We inherit much from our animal ancestors, particularly mammals and their needs for social attachments.
Within your brain are systems that assess your perceived worth and value within a social setting.
When you don’t know someone, you put your best foot forward in an effort to gain their acceptance. If you hold too much back, the other person doesn’t really get to know you fully, only the part you show them, which is sometimes called a mask. Some basic trust can be built in this way, but deep down, we’ll know that the other person doesn’t really accept us fully because we haven’t given them the chance to yet.
The problem with this situation is that all relationships, whether professional, familial, or romantic work like a contract. You and another person are doing something together you both value. In order to feel good about the relationship, you have to have confidence that you can trust another person to do what they need to do to make things successful.
In business, you have to trust that your co-workers will do their job, so you can do yours.
In family, you have to trust your loved ones will be honest with you, so you can work together to create a fulfilling life for all involved.
In romance, you have to trust your partner enough to be authentic, fully, or part of you will feel unloved, becoming a breeding ground for resentment and passive-aggressiveness.
Related Victim Mentality: Codependency, Passive Aggressiveness, and the Healing Power of Bravery
What happens when you refuse to be brave and authentic? You feel dissatisfied because if you can’t honestly share what you want, how can another person work with you to meet your needs?
The codependency passive-aggressiveness cycle is founded on a belief that you can’t be honest, you can’t be authentic, because you can’t trust the people around you with your emotions, dreams, and values. This is a negative core belief that creates a toxic mindset, an unsolvable problem with respect to trust.
Why unsolvable? Because if you believe you can’t trust anyone, you won’t bravely share what’s in your heart, which is the very thing you need to do to build trust.
Remember, you can’t build trust if you don’t risk anything. When you risk something, you open yourself up.
If you give your car to a friend for the first time, and they honor your rules for using it, they proved that you can trust them. You will feel at ease the next time you give them your car. The same is true in relationships, you risk your heart, and in the act of it being treated honorably, you feel more love and peace for another. And what’s amazing is that this sense of love and peace makes it easier to trust other people, even yourself.
If you never let yourself build trust through courage, you’ll assume others can’t be trusted, and you’ll treat them this way. Everyone will become a villain.
But the problem is you, not them.
Granted, there’s plenty of reasons not to trust people. But if you never give them a chance, you guarantee that things will never change. This is why the belief you can’t trust others creates an unsolvable problem—so long as you continue to avoid authenticity. Once you let yourself get to this point, life quickly becomes a dark morass of suffering, as you can’t seem to form meaningful relationships with others.
What often happens is that our hurt inner child fills our head with paranoid delusions, excuses that compel us to justify continuing to be cowardly.
Once you recognize this dynamic, it’s easy to see how so many people get caught up in the fear of being hurt by others.
And yet, the solution is what we often try to run away from: authenticity, bravery, and courage to be yourself.
Psychologically, we’re designed to seek out social connections with others.
If you don’t find a way to meet these social needs in a healthy fashion, your animal mind that is programmed for survival will overwhelm the human you, causing extreme stress and anxiety. Thus, you might feel like it’s reasonable to avoid being authentic because you guarantee to protect yourself from potential disappointment, but this comes at a hefty price. You’re basically using self-imposed abandonment and social ostracization as a coping mechanism, which causes the extreme negative emotions you’re trying to avoid.
This double-bind situation wherein we can justify avoiding authenticity creates the very pain we’re trying to escape from. Thus, the only way out is through.
It will take courage to step out of your comfort zone. So make sure if you’ve been avoiding this that you choose people you can trust to share yourself with. Every time you recognize your urge to hold back and do the reverse, you’ll reprogram your brain for authenticity, through bravery. And you’ll likely feel really good in the process.
On the other side of your fear of loss, is the promise land of joy and connection you’ve been dreaming about.
– Justin
by
The word “courage” is often reserved for entering a battlefield or facing difficult circumstances. But there’s a more subtle aspect to courage that is needed in our close relationships.
The word “courage” comes from the word meaning “heart.” The French word “la coeur” means “heart.” To open our heart to another human being is the ultimate act of courage.
Being courageous doesn’t mean being a fearless warrior. It means being a warrior of the heart. We allow ourselves to have fear, to wrestle with it, and find our way through without being crippled by it. In a relationship, this means expressing difficult truths, and communicating our genuine feelings and needs in a kind way rather than by blaming, attacking, or manipulating others. It takes inner strength to not blurt out the first thing that pops into our mind, which may be hurtful words or a critical tone of voice.
Allowing ourselves to be fully present with another person takes what the renowned philosopher Paul Tillich called The Courage To Be. Accepting and honoring ourselves as we are, even if others judge us or don’t think well of us, is the ultimate act of self-affirmation, self-acceptance, and self-love. (Interestingly, Paul Tillich greatly influenced Rollo May, who was one of the creators of Humanistic and Existential Psychology.)
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Revealing Our Inner World
It takes a lot of mindfulness to know what we’re experiencing inside — what we’re feeling and wanting. And it takes great courage to reveal our inner world to another person, who has the power to accept or reject us.
We might conclude that it’s safer to keep all of our feelings and needs inside, leaving us less exposed to the possibility of painful criticism or rejection. But there are at least 2 problems with this popular strategy. First, we might live our lives in a very small way, not spreading our wings and moving toward a more fulfilling life by giving ourselves the freedom of self-expression. Secondly, we’re then not allowing the possibility of receiving a wonderful, positive response from another person, which could deepen our connection and increase our happiness.
It can be scary to let ourselves be known. Courage is needed to allow another person to see us, which is necessary if we want the possibility of a deeper love and intimacy to unfold.
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Emotional Safety
We need courage to risk showing ourselves in our important relationships, but we don’t want to be foolish about it by repeatedly being vulnerable with someone who doesn’t treat us well. We need emotional safety — trusting that if we’re vulnerable, we’re likely to be heard and respected rather than shamed or criticized.
But we can’t expect 100% safety. Being authentic often feels like a risk, which is why it requires courage. But as we build trust over time with a person, we’ll experience more trust and less risk in being ourselves.
Trusting a person means that our heart feels at rest with them. We feel at ease sharing our feelings, our needs, our playfulness. We’re not bracing against the prospect of an unpleasant attack. It’s a beautiful thing when the courage to show ourselves leads to an easeful and trusting connection with another person.
Resilience
The Irish author Oscar Wilde said that “Experience is simply the name we give our mistakes.” As we move toward building deeper connections with people, we need to be willing to not do it perfectly. This means embracing a willingness to fail and learn from our mistakes. Rather than be paralyzed by shame for making mistakes, we need the courage to pick ourselves up again and again and take small steps forward.
Saying this another way, cultivating resilience is a key to building healthy relationships. Such resilience reflects an inner strength and courage to allow ourselves to have feelings such as sadness and perhaps moments of shame around our mistakes, but without concluding that there’s something wrong with us.
Realizing that what we call “mistakes” are nothing more than the ways we acted based upon our limited wisdom and experience at the time, we can learn from them and gradually move toward the deeper love and connection we want.
Stillness in the Storm Editor: Why did we post this?
The preceding information discusses the benefit of framing your romantic relationships in terms of growth instead of merely having your needs met. Given that change is unavoidable, growth is a survival choice. If one chooses growth and cultivates that in their lives with their fellows the changes that life brings can be beneficial and rewarding instead of tragic. For romance, the love and respect a couple has for each other will die if they fail to cultivate growth in the relationship, through respect, transparent communication, and value harmonization. With this knowledge in hand, a great many relationship perils can be avoided while at the same time training oneself in the art of true companionship that provides progressive levels of fulfilment.
– Justin
Not sure how to make sense of this? Want to learn how to discern like a pro? Read this essential guide to discernment, analysis of claims, and understanding the truth in a world of deception: 4 Key Steps of Discernment – Advanced Truth-Seeking Tools.
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Source:
https://psychcentral.com/blog/how-it-takes-courage-to-build-healthy-relationships/
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