Love, Upgraded: Ditching Destructive Dating Habits

A common topic in therapy is often dating, specifically finding oneself in unhealthy relationships again and again. Over time we can begin to wonder if it is us, lose confidence in our judgements and the ability to trust in ourself.

Sometimes when we have experienced unhealthy relationship dynamics over repeated times, we can start to become desensitized to them. We might begin to notice our bodies natural intuition less, whether that comes up as a pit in our stomach or a burning sensation in our face. We slowly find ourselves pushing past the thoughts or questions that might arise at first when something doesn’t feel quite right.

It’s not uncommon to hear the desire to spot red flags in new relationships, specifically when one has found themselves in several unhealthy relationships prior. Although, I think exploring unhealthy or unhelpful patterns is a process, I have noticed some simple questions that can get us thinking on our own as well.

It can be helpful to begin to slow down, notice and bring awareness the following:

1. Our needs, wants and desires: This sounds simple but can be much more difficult to tune into. I find that when we have experienced unhealthy dynamics, particularly if it began in childhood, we might have gotten separated from our own needs, wants and desires at some point.

2. What we are feeling in our body: We take in an millions of bits of information every second but our conscious mind can only take in a very small fraction of that (1). This is where tuning into our body is helpful. If we are someone who has slowly been cutting off our experience with our body, this might not be easy. It could feel overwhelming or we might experience ourselves feeling blank. Either way this is information and a place to start. Over time we can regain connection with our body and the more we are able to slow down, the more we might notice the unease when we meet a new person. Or we might notice our frustration of not feeling truly heard in a conflict or even dismissed.

3. Conflict and our ability to self regulate in a balanced way: We all have different conflict resolution styles or lack thereof. This is often connected to how we have experienced conflict earlier in our lives and what was modeled or not modeled. Certainly, there are tools we can gain if we struggle with addressing conflicts or resolving them in our relationships. However, I think starting with our ability to self sooth and feel emotionally regulated in the moment is important. Self regulation doesn’t just mean that we feel calm, sometimes we feel so calm that we feel empty or go blank. If we are feeling completely hijacked by our emotions or disconnected from them entirely, all the techniques like using “I statements” or “reflective listening” either go out the door or feel disingenuous to those around us. Only once we are able to have more emotional regulation are we able to really start to tease out and break down what is happening in conflicts.

There can be so many forces, unconscious and conscious connected to these patterns and therapy is a great place to start to begin to unravel them.

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/14/891140598/understanding-unconscious-bias#:~:text=via Getty Images-,The human brain sometimes takes cognitive shortcuts to help make,to implicit or unconscious bias.&text=via Getty Images-,The human brain can process 11 million bits of information,bits of information a second.