Rejuvenate your Relationships:
Applying the Gottman Method, by Emily Israel, M.S.
Relationships can provide us with comfort, security, enjoyment, pleasure, love, companionship, support, safety, and care. However, we can feel very distressed when our relationships lack these positive experiences. Most of us have experienced challenges in relationships with a partner or loved one at some point. There are ways to support the development of healthy relationships, as well as ways to help a relationship that has become more conflictual become healthy once again.
John Gottman, Ph.D., and his wife Julie Gottman, Ph.D. spent many years researching aspects that support healthy couple relationships and found tools that can benefit both couples and other relationships.
Ways to support a healthy relationship according to Gottman Research:
- Get to know the other person’s needs, values, past experiences, priorities, and stresses.
- Experience and express love to those with whom you share a relationship (more specific to romantic partners but can apply to other loved ones).
- Turn towards your loved one and respond when they engage you. Create opportunities to spend time together to support the building of connection.
- Try to view the person from a positive perspective.
- Management of Conflict
- Engage in active listening skills to develop empathy: listen intently to the person’s feelings and acknowledge them by validating and summarizing what you heard them say.
- Avoid defensiveness: Take accountability and create an improvement plan. Acknowledge your role in an argument and pick one way you might make it better.
- Avoid attacking the other person’s character or criticizing them: Start with “I feel” and describe what created the feeling without attacking without directing at them and share what you need to feel better.
- Resist Stonewalling: Stonewalling is when we become frustrated in a conflict and we walk away from our significant other or withdraw. When you are tempted to tune out a loved one, consider engaging in self-soothing techniques and taking a timed break to give yourself time to calm down instead. This break should be no more than 24 hours and is meant to bring down each person’s heart rate so that you can re-engage effectively.
- Discuss future dreams and understand each other’s goals to create shared meaning.
- When one person is stressed about something such as an incident at work, unrelated to the relationship, join in on how they feel and support their position on the issue.
- Demonstrate trust and commitment to one another.
If you would like to develop these skills further and rejuvenate any of your relationships, please contact us at the Center.
