In the opening piece I invited you to notice the following:
When does your heart beat faster?
When do you feel calm?
Which people or surroundings give you a sense of safety?
Where, when, or with whom do you feel more on edge?
How do you experience these things physically?
What are your thoughts doing? Ruminating? Avoiding?
I encouraged you to pause when you noticed a recurring feeling/sensation and that you asked yourself this: What is familiar to me here? It could be echoes of past relationships, confusing feelings that are familiar to you but you’ve yet to understand or any other realisations/thoughts.
If you have yet to start, give yourself a week to notice yourself in the world before doing the exercise. It can be helpful to take notes and to keep them in a book dedicated to this series.
COUPLES
If you’ve both spent time noticing for the last week, you can set aside a time in the next few days and do your first purposeful reflection session. Use the tips I described in The Secure Base before you start each suggested exercise.
For this exercise I would like you to share with your partner what you discovered when paying attention to yourself with the questions above in mind, and if applicable, what was familiar to you. You don’t have to have arrived at any answer or greater understanding, for now you are simply sharing your thoughts. Be mindful of when you might be tempted to pull in your partner. Instead try to focus on yourself and your own feelings by using I feel statements, rather than you make me feel.
Important: In the next chapter we will go through active listening and effective speaking techniques, but before then, it’s important to be aware of how you are usually drawn to communicate. Pay attention in this exercise to patterns you may fall into individually, and as a couple. You can share these observations but be mindful of entering a negative back and forth. Let any observations be building blocks for change rather than ammunition.
INDIVIDUAL
If you are doing this series on your own, you can bring these observations into awareness when around other people. Notice how you listen, as well as how you feel heard, or not. Also pay attention to the signals your body sends you, and whether they propel you to connect, or stop you from doing so. When your heart is beating faster, do you take a breath to settle, or does your brain increasingly scan for danger? When you feel calm around someone, how does it invite you to behave? What are the qualities about the person you feel calm with? If you ruminate, are you more or less likely to talk about your thoughts? For the exercise itself, I suggest you set aside some time and write down what you notice, keeping it only as observations for now.