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Love Now!: Untangling Relationships - Softcover

Harrell Ph.D., Jan; Robins Ph.D., Alan

 
9781940468570: Love Now!: Untangling Relationships
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1940468574 ISBN 13: 9781940468570
Verlag: White Cloud Press, 2017

Inhaltsangabe

We are not born knowing how to do relationships – we have to learn. We have to learn about ourselves and our own reactions so we can translate that self-knowledge into positive action in a relationship. The “issues” that arise in every relationship are not “problems” that must be avoided. They alert us that we have the opportunity to increase our understanding of ourselves and others.

Never having been schooled in the world of emotions, it is easy to feel frightened and overwhelmed when we run into an experience we do not understand and do not know how to handle. We mistakenly think these learning opportunities are “problems.” We think something is wrong, either with our own Self or with the Other.

Relationships are the school for our adult developmental task to deepen our knowledge about ourselves and about emotions. Without this knowledge, we feel desperate and hopeless, misinterpreting ignorance as failure.

The information in Love Now! is so powerful that readers can immediately begin to step away from the caustic snare of angry accusations and raging arguments. Love Now! gets to the root of the issues in relationships.

Real change requires that we not only know something, but that we become it. Love Now! guides the reader to deep internalization of concepts that can lead to transformation, not just behavioral change and adaptation.

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Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Jan Harrell, Ph.D. has been a psychologist working in private practice for over 35 years. She has taught courses at UCLA Extension and Southern Oregon University. She was blessed with a long and loving marriage to her friend, husband, and writing partner, Alan Robins, until his passing in 2015. She lives in Ashland, Oregon.

Alan Robins, Ph.D., worked for the Los Angeles YMCA’s before beginning his career in psychology. He also was an amazing comedian, forming two a cappella comedy quartets that performed in the Cook Islands, New Zealand, Russia, Europe and for children in Oregon.

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~ The Beginning ~ The Premise of This Book

Jan ~

Epiphanies. Life changing illuminations. They’re different from those comfortable little awarenesses that make our life easier, like “Oh – I’m out of milk – I’d better remember to buy some.” No – epiphanies challenge us. They demand growth and change of the deepest kind. The kind of change that feels like we’re turning ourselves inside out so we can grow in totally new directions that we’ve never dreamed even existed. Like a physicist discovering a new dimension, we suddenly have a whole new world opened up before us. I’ve had several in my life. They’re not easy to deal with. They have come out of nowhere and have totally and irrevocably shattered my comfortable notion of reality. They have each come in an electrifying blast that exploded my known world, replacing it with a revelation that is instantly both clearly self-evident, true and undeniable, yet shocking in the total reversal of all that I have imagined, totally contrary to how I have been living.

The first epiphany I had was when I was in graduate school. I was lying in bed, ready to fall asleep, when that bolt of electricity entered the top of my head and charged down the length of my body. “I’m not learning a profession,” I realized. “I’m learning POWER!” I recognized immediately that if I didn’t use that power to grow and to free myself from my issues, I could become skillfully manipulative! in I was stunned. I knew, already, that when I was frightened, I wasn’t direct, and didn’t speak from my heart with vulnerability and honesty. I was pretty good at this – no one ever seemed to realize what I was doing.

Now, in school to be a clinical psychologist, I was learning tools that would make me dangerous if I didn’t face my fears and issues. I had received a directive - the imperative to work, to grow and to purify myself. I knew that if I didn’t, I would be tempted to use my tools in ways that would make it impossible to be the person I wanted to be or to have the kind of relationships I wanted to have - and I would never be able to feel at peace or good about myself.

My latest epiphany occurred only recently. It has given rise to this book…. It was during our regular morning walk – Al, the puppies (Cassie and Maya) and me ― that it occurred. Al said something that instantly created irritation in me. That’s when it happened ― that rarely experienced but absolutely familiar electricity that stopped me dead in my tracks. I couldn’t move. In that instant, I knew that my anger was my demand that he be just like me, so I didn’t have to feel our differentness. It was my demand that he be a grown-up so I wouldn’t have to be. I literally couldn’t talk. My new revelation far exceeded my level of development. I could see it, but I could not live it. I stood there, and thought, with shock, “I’ve just glimpsed what real maturity is.”

And then I really got mad. I got mad that I couldn’t just get mad anymore. I got mad that I was so undeveloped that I was getting mad at Al in the first place. And I bit my tongue. (Not really – I don’t like pain. But in my mind, I bit it.) I couldn’t talk, because my anger was no longer valid, even to me. I had nothing else to say. I was too young in my awareness. All I could do was be mad and resolutely “bite” my tongue.

There is theory and then there is being. Let’s be honest – one is fairly easy to grasp with our intelligent and well-developed left-brain. The other is a whole different story. I can know and understand and often even sound evolved, wise and mature . . . but inside, I struggle with sudden and powerful emotions that overwhelm me. What really stopped me in my tracks is that I now understood that this whole marriage struggle is about separateness ― being different (as opposed to him just being messed up.) I know it’s not him. It’s me. I was angry because he is just human. He is not perfect. He is in his own struggle to deal with his own issues. He is not all evolved and grown up. Again, I realized that the bottom line is I want him to be grown up so I don’t have to be! I had a secret project throughout our marriage. While I was aware of my behaviors, I never fully realized the secret purpose behind them. I had been enduring, waiting, patient, suggesting, critical, helpful, loving, hopeful, tolerating, suffering, giving, raging ― everything I could think of to get him to change (GROW UP!) so I wouldn’t have to!

I began to share this insight with friends and clients. We no longer focused on superficial complaints or communication dynamics. Any “argument” or “problem” became the signal for each of us to look into our own feelings and behavior, as opposed to looking at what the other person did “wrong” that we were “justifiably” upset about. Hurt, anger and the physical experience of tightness in my body became the signals for introspection, not accusation. It is a stunningly different perspective and approach to the tangle of relationships. I find that other people are affected the same way I was ― they are speechless and in shock. Their desperate complaints and accusations, aimed at getting their spouse to change and be just like them, no longer have validity to them, either. Not yet having learned what was triggered in themselves, or what to do about it, they also tend to sit with “deer in the headlights” faces – caught in awareness, not yet able to move.

It is to all of us, Al and I included, that this book is dedicated. We are all trying to find our way to love, but because we do not even understand the emotions and reactions we have, we have no idea how to deal with them. Desperate to be understood and loved by our spouse, we try to get them to see what they “did” to us, and all we do is hurt each other more; then we feel even more alone, misunderstood and hopeless. With the tools this book, we will each be empowered to grow up, to find the adult, mature “me” that we find easily in so many other relationships. We will be able to learn how to bring that mature self into our marriage and create the loving closeness for which we all long.

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Verlag
White Cloud Press
Erscheinungsdatum
2017
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1940468574
ISBN 13 
9781940468570
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
248
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