Soulmate Skills

“Stay near me.  Speak my name.”  Those lines are from the poem, “Midcentury Love Letter;” very special to us.  That second sentence is what we want to point out to you today.  Specifically, that there is power in speaking your partner’s name.  Business people know this principle.  We all love to hear our name.  Now here’s a variation on that for lovers.  Get in touch with your adoration of your beloved, and then whisper–yes, whisper their name in their ear–four times.  It’s magical.  Here’s how I wrote in in my letter to Jim a month before our marriage:  “Oh, Jim, I hold you in my arms and hear you lose yourself in a litany of whispered ‘Kathys.’”  It was profound.   If you try this, you’ll experience the deepest power of speaking their name.

Quiz Question:  Have I ever felt taken advantage of?  If you answered “Yes,”  we have help for you.  We’re drawing here from p. 102 of our book, Disarming Your Inner Critic (James Elliott with Kathryn Elliott).  “You may give more than you want to give, and your own needs may go unmet.  You feel used and taken advantage of.  You’ll have plenty of resentment and anger, because you know deep down that you must really be defective if you have to give so many things just to get someone to like you and stay with you.”  Of course, you suppress the anger because your Inner Critic tells you it would surely drive the other person away.  Now, there’s the heart of the problem.  It’s your Inner Critic driving all this.  The good news is, we’ve just exposed your Inner Critic’s hidden role in your allowing yourself to be taken advantage of.  You can get free.  Label it first.  “That’s my Inner Critic telling me I have to say yes, to give more than I really want to.”  Then get released, using one of our powerful challenging statements to the Inner Critic.  We love it when people get free.  You will too.

For the first time ever, we have a vegetable garden!  A wonderful friend planted it in our back yard as a gift to us.  Now, we have a profusion of cucumbers and tomatoes.  It’s the extravagance of spring right before our very eyes.  In this very intimate experience of nature we see a metaphor for the nature of love.  At the heart of love is extravagance.  In reading through our 1989 love letters, I found my meditation on this.  I wrote Jim, “Love in all its Extravagance has open hands.  It gives and doesn’t fret or point the finger at motive of the receiver.  No chiding, no tight-lipped, parsimonious welcome.  It has open arms.  It runs to meet its beloved.”  So, go ahead.  Be extravagant in your loving.  It’s the nature of love.

You’ve seen baboons charge, right?   Arms rigid.  Chest out.  Nostrils huffing.  We humans do that too–or some version of it when we’re angry.  It’s scary.   And it’s meant to be.  Translated it says, “I’m feeling threatened.  Afraid I’m being attacked.  I’m going to protect myself by scaring you with my anger.”  Hmm.  Sound familiar?  That’s because we humans do this too.  When feeling threatened, we puff up with anger also.  Did you know that the reason you feel scared of the other person’s anger is because their anger is meant to scare you?  Want to know what their anger is really about?  It’s that they’re trying to ward off an Inner Critic event.  I learned this personally by experiencing it myself.  And we help our counseling clients make this connection in themselves.  When our Inner Critic pounces, it makes us feel guilty, defective, shameful, inferior, and, of course, scared.  That feels so awful, we’ll do anything to stop it.  That includes resorting to anger to scare our partner who is triggering our Inner Critic, often by such innocent behavior as making a request of us.  We have a solution the baboon does not:  We can use our evolved brain to challenge our Inner Critic.  Then we don’t have to resort to anger.  Ah!  Peace will reign.*

For more on anger and the Inner Critic, read Ch. 7 of James Elliott and Kathryn Elliott’s book, Disarming Your Inner Critic, available here on our Products page and at amazon.com.

Once you find your soulmate, you’re going to want to make that love last.  We know.  When we found each other 22 years ago, we valued each other so highly, we wanted an eternal love.  Jim was wise enough to know the key ingredient it would take.  It wasn’t our white-hot attraction to each other (though that helps).  It wasn’t just that we were compatible (though that was important too).  It was skills.  We’ve needed very specific and unique skills, like requesting, challenging our Inner Critic, retrieval skills following a glitch, and more.  You’ll need these too.  We’ve shared some with you on our Skills page of this website.  There are more in our book, Disarming Your Inner Critic (James Elliott, Ph.D. and Kathryn Elliott, Ph.D.).  We teach more in our seminars.  We use them in our counseling with couples.  Yes, you can make love last.  In fact, if you use these skills, your love will grow.  Now, that’s a formula for bliss.

I know.  It’s not Christmas.  Even so, visions of sugarplums are dancing in my head.  Well, a version of sugarplums.  As I read a letter I wrote Jim in 1989 (four months before we married), it suggested how important our ability to image, dream, envision is.  Here’s what I told Jim:  “Thank you for imaging me as a lovely bride.  You are incredible, you loving man!”  This came after I had told Jim about the wedding dress I’d bought–a Laura Ashley confection of flowers on a sky blue background.  Two thousand miles away in California he was dreaming of me in that dress on our wedding day.  I, in turn, was doing my own dreaming.  I wrote, “A little thought: I think I want you to drive the car when we are married.”  Each of our dreams came to be.  Four months later, I stood by him in that dress as we spoke our vows.  As we left the wedding reception, he drove.  So, our message today is, go ahead.  Let your own visions of sugarplums dance in your head.  Dreams really do come true.

You long for closeness.  But it often eludes you.  And with the very people you love and value.  We want to offer you the key.  And it’s something you can do today.  It has to do with coping with other people’s intense feelings.  Because when you start to get close, those feelings will come up.  You’ll be tempted to make their feelings go away.  Whoa!  That’s not it.  Here it is:  Listen to their feelings.  Because closeness comes when you are able to let the other person’s feelings be what they are and just listen.  Try it today.  We’re with you.*

*This wisdom is from James Elliott’s book Disarming Your Inner Critic.  There’s much more where that came from.  Buy it here on our Products page and at amazon.com.

You know you’ve done it a million times.  You liked something your partner did–but never said a word.  Here’s your tip for today:  If your partner is doing something you like, it’s absolutely essential for closeness that you say it to them.  Here’s what Jim told me in his 1989 letter:  “I like it when I give you some feedback (e.g., ‘I like such-and-such that you said’) and you say, “That’s important for me to hear.”  Please do as much of this as you possiby can.”  So, I have.  And it’s a tried and true formula.  Like It?  Say It!  You’re gonna get bliss!

Here’s a self-test for you.  Do you ever say:  1.  “You painted me into a corner.”  2.  “You put me on the spot.”  3.  “I feel like I’m being punished.”  4.  “You’re not letting me be me.”  5.  “You’re making me into the bad guy!”  If you said “Yes” to any or all of these,  realize that you’ve been feeling like a victim.  More important, each is a clue to your own power giveaway.  We want to help you get free.  The secret is that your own shoulds (not the other person’s “power”) are keeping you in the victim position.  The way out?  Take back your power by challenging  each should contained in the statement you’ve said.  For example, “You painted me into a corner” contains the should, “You should stay where someone wants you to be.”  The challenge is, “I have the right to go anywhere I please.  I have the right to get out of any corner any time I wish.”  Truth is, you are a free spirit.  Claim it today!  (For more on getting free from power giveaways, read page 124 in Disarming Your Inner Critic by James Elliott with Kathryn Elliott.)

Judgmentalism.  Defensiveness.  Withdrawal.  All examples of negativity.  We know the toll it takes on your dream for a fulfilling relationship.  We want to offer you hope–and skills for breaking this pattern.  In Anthetic Relationship Therapy, we teach Clue Work: using surface clues such as your negative responses as doors opening into the deeper mechanisms that drive negative behavior.  Once you identify the clues, you can dismantle the mechanisms and put them out of play.  We’re not talking about willpower.  Nor trying to shape yourself cosmetically into looking good in others’ eyes.  We’re talking about accepting yourself fully.  We call it becoming an Anthetic free spirit.  We’ve layed it all out for you in our book, Disarming Your Inner Critic*.  As you practice the skills contained in it, you’ll find that in getting free from self-constrictedness, you’ll be in shape for emotional closeness.  And for the relationship of your dreams.

*Disarming Your Inner Critic, James Elliott, Ph.D., with Kathryn Elliott, Ph.D., is available here on our Products page and at amazon.com.