Relationship-Toolkit-Part-3_Gratitude

Relationship Toolkit Part 3: Gratitude

This month of November 2016, I have been talking about 3 important tools that need to be in your relationship toolkit.  The first one involved learning you and your partner’s love language and how to speak your partner’s love language.  The second tool was your “romantic muscle.”  Today I am writing to you about gratitude and of course it was timed to come out right on Thanksgiving which is all about gratitude and giving thanks for who and what you have in your life.

Gratitude comes from focusing on the good things you have in your life.  As a relationship therapist, I want to emphasize being grateful for WHO you have in your life.  Take time to appreciate the people who love you and care about you.  Allow yourself to feel the love in your heart as you focus on the ways these people have demonstrated caring.  I know that every relationship has its problems and shadow side.  However, those aspects of the relationship do not need to take away from the experience of being loved.  I worked with many couples just today that were negatively triggered by things said and done. However all of them had a chance in my office to see the good and see the real caring underneath the pain that caused the triggering.  They were able to experience the gratefulness towards their partner despite the inevitable ups and downs of these close relationships.

Also, be grateful to those people in your life who have helped you learn about yourself whether they treated you well or not.  This “symbolic sight” allows you to see how you have benefitted even from painful relationships.  With “literal sight”, those experiences were “bad” and painful.   Looking with symbolic sight allows you to be grateful even for those experiences, as you become aware of the growth you had by going through those painful relationships.

So, enjoy appreciating those people in your lives that have lead you to this very moment.  Choose to be grateful.  Open your mind and heart and life automatically becomes sweeter.  Happy Thanksgiving!

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Relationship-Toolkit-Part-3_Gratitude

Relationship Toolkit Part 3: Gratitude

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