Nurturing Relationships

               Nurturing Relationships

Happy Relationships are an integral part of human lives to remain productive, joyous and enhancing positive well-being. Healthy Relationships are the core component for building  a healthy society, for personal growth and happy living. Relationships that are embedded with mutual trust, affection and respect  acts as a  buffer to adversities.

Here are 5 Effective ways to nurture relationships with significant others in our lives: 

 

Be Empathetic: Understanding others  pain, emotional agony, challenges  and feeling emotions of others with same intensity but remaining calm and compose, may  generate a sense of security to enable to overcome hardships. Being empathetic in attitude foster emotional bonds and deep trust for each other.

Open Communication: Practice active listening, avoid being judgmental and impulsive in jumping to conclusions, these tools would generate a mutual sense of affection and a sense of being respected. Positive communications are the key to unravel ones likes and dislikes, strenghthening understanding and co-existing in harmony. Learning to agree to disagree is a tool to open communication. Effective communication points must include relevance , selections of  words, framing of sentence, clear intentions, rational  points for discussion are needed to have an effective communication thus fostering connectedness and like-mindedness amongst each other.

Be Solution Focused: Almost every relationships goes through upheavals, conflicts, emotional turmoil etc., therefore for conflict resolution, one must focus on solutions rather than the causes of the problems. Specifically putting efforts to know the strength i.e., What can be done together to overcome the situation rather than focusing on weaknesses i.e., What cannot be undone or gone wrong. Avoid blame gaming rather share the burden equally. This solution focused attitude would instill mutual interdependence, agreeableness and foster togetherness.

Be Complimentary to Each Other: Most relationships do not always  share similar thought patterns or think alike.,But investing time and energy to  encourage the other person to follow his/ her desires and be passionate about each others success, would enable to develop a sense of mutual care and respect for each other. Filling each other with qualities that one isn’t possessing are ways to enrich each other lives and strengthening personal bonds.

Value Each Other’s ‘ME Space': Too much of involvement in others lives may be regarded as ‘interference’ and could be suffocating for them. Giving space ( read time )that one feels required would pave way for self-introspection, healing,  rejuvenating oneself to bounce back, and to become creative. This valuing of each other’s ‘'me space' attitude would foster affection, sense of freedom, and happiness in relationships.

The above ways if practiced diligently would enable human beings to bloom their relationships to some extent.

By: Bhavna Mukund 

Clinical Psychologist