Author Archives: samebutdifferentblogger

About samebutdifferentblogger

Hello. I'm a Counsellor and Psychotherapist with twenty-five years experience of counselling clients from a variety of settings. I've worked as a Counsellor in a GP surgery, as part of a team counselling clients in a local government setting as well as mor recently having my own private practice and seeing clients on a longer-term basis. I've also worked as an Associate Lecturer in Psychology. I have now decided to focus on blogging about the experiences and issues that clients have brought to me over the years. I hope that you find my blogs interesting - please do comment if you would like to do so. I realise that comments might not always be positive, but it's all a learning curve for me!

Feeling That You’ve Outgrown Your Relationship?

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Reading the title of this blog it may sound harsh but if you’re in a long-term relationship, you’ll know that there are ups and downs over the years. Hard though it is to think like this, some relationships are forever and a lot are ‘for now’ or for ‘some time ahead’. Sounds cynical? Maybe, that’s often the reality.

But how do you know if and when you’ve outgrown your relationship? Maybe something drastic has happened to change it, but quite often partners change at a different pace even though at the beginning of our relationships it seemed impossible.

When you’ve worked hard to keep things going but your partner doesn’t want to change (or finds it too difficult), you can end up feeling resentful and angry. Sound familiar? If one of you has changed in how you live your life, how you view your career or there’s been a long-term health problem, you might be very different people from the ones who met years ago.

Another sign that you’ve outgrown the other person can be that you feel embarrassed and awkward if you’re out together. Our partners are often a reflection of who we are and if they’re still stuck at how they used to be, it can feel as if they’re holding us back when we want to move forward. If you’re constantly having to ask them to make changes or you liked the fact that they were relaxed about life but now it irks you and you’re always pushing for something different, it’s time to think about it all seriously

You might have found that as you’ve developed new interests, had different conversations with other people and realise that your beliefs are different it can lead to you looking for someone who shares your values and interests. It’s easy to be drawn to a new person who seems exciting and different from your current partner.

So, what’s the answer (if there is one – not easy!). First of all, talk about it and then talk some more; tell each other how you’d like things to be and how you can help each other to get there. Then, set a realistic timeframe to look at things again. By that time, you might both have come to the realisation that it’s not working and it’s unlikely to change. When you’ve given it your best efforts, it may be time to break up, but that’s rarely an easy path to take……..

Hopefully you’ve enjoyed reading this blog and, if so, you can see my blogs as soon as they are published (usually on Wednesdays) by pressing the ‘follow’ button and you can share them with your friends. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Instagram (samebutdifferent) and read my FB posts at Same But Different. #loss #depression #mentalhealth #anger #melancholy

Could Your Breakup Be Your Shakeup?

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Most of us have had a romantic breakup in our lives and it’s often absolutely devastating but if one or both of you have decided that your relationship has run its course, then you may have to eventually accept that even if you don’t want to.

I’ve written about some aspects of this before – see my blog ‘Can You Still Be Friends With Your Ex?’ posted on 13 July where I write about how you can stay friendly as long as certain boundaries are kept. If you read that blog you’ll remember that even though you will almost certainly miss them, you’ll both need time and space to deal with all the difficult emotions.

If, after some time, you want to try to be friends, try not to fall into old patterns and habits. To maintain a friendship, you have to behave like friends so that will mean not doing things that you used to do when you were a couple. If you find yourself thinking “It’s like we never broke up”, it’s probably best to get back to maintaining a distance again.

Better still, avoid using social media so much – taking some time away from it can be very helpful and will mean that you won’t end up looking at photos of ‘perfect couples’ as well as those of your ex, possibly with someone new. Try not to announce your breakup on social media and even though you might want to share the fact that your ex lied and cheated or did something else hurtful, it’s best not to go down that road.

So, if you’ve sorted that out in your mind, is this the time to do things differently, thinking about you and what you want. Even if you have children or other responsibilities, there are often things that you can do to put yourself first sometimes. In other words, the breakup can shake things up and often for the better!

You can use this time to create a regular self-care routine so that each day you do something that brings you some happiness. This can be seeing friends even though that can be hard – if you were used to having someone to come home to after an evening out, it’s difficult not to dwell on that, especially if it was often a happy experience. But, you can do it and it will get easier with time (you may not believe this but give it a try anyway!). Spend some time on a hobby that you may have neglected and start exercising. If meditation’s more your thing, try to find some meditation on YouTube or download an app. to encourage you along the way.

This is the time to open up your curtains and let in the light, burn a scented candle as well as having a shower using all your favourite products.

Even though it’s hard to sleep well after a breakup, try to relax before bed and resist looking at your phone for the hour before you put the light out. Then there’s comfort eating – who hasn’t resorted to carb-filled food when feeling really down? It’s tempting to get through the evenings with a glass or two of wine to help you forget what’s happened too. Consider saving these for special times or just once a week.

There’s going to be a lot of sadness, confusion and loneliness as well as anger and grief in equal doses after a breakup but if you can write down your feelings, even illustrate them, you’ll find that it will help. Talking to someone you trust can be very comforting as well.

It won’t be easy and shaking things up will take time but one day, you will hopefully find that you like your new life and every minute of each day will no longer be filled with thoughts of your ex and the life you once shared.

How Can You Stay In Love, Even When Things Are Really Tough?

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Isn’t this what we all dream of? A love that withstands anything and everything….but, as the song goes ‘Staying in Love Ain’t Easy’ (Wendell B.)

Our society creates a very romanticised, almost unrealistic image of what it is to be in love and it’s usually a lot quicker to fall in love than it is to fall out of love. That heady feeling can last a lifetime for many people but for many more it’s about recognising that people are unlikely to change what are their basic personality traits, much as we might want them to!

When I worked as a relationship counsellor and saw couples who felt that they were no longer in love, I tried to emphasise that both partners have to be willing to keep their love alive – it’s pretty hard for one person to keep things going if the other one is ‘opting out’ emotionally and physically. But, if you’re both committed to keeping your love alive and your life together happy, what can you do, even if things are difficult?

Start with what attracted you to your partner which could be any number of things – their sense of humour, kindness, their academic achievements or, quite possibly, a raw attraction which was mainly physical. But if it was enough to bring you together, it can hopefully be enough to keep you together in the long-term.

Fun and the friendship that you hopefully have are one of the most important parts of love – that’s paying attention to your partner, asking about their day, doing things together that you both enjoy and going out as a couple and with other couples too.

You need connection too – trying new activities together, showing empathy for the challenges they might be facing, even if you’d deal with it differently, dreaming and talking about your future together.

Intimacy is important to most of us – starting the day with a kiss, always kissing goodnight at the end of the day, telling them what you love about sex with them, holding hands. All of these are connections that keep people together.

Then there are the arguments – most couples have them, sometimes almost daily! If this is part of your relationship try to take responsibility for some part of the problem, avoid swearing and yelling during arguments and try to be clear and direct. Face your challenges together and see what you can do differently, especially if you’ve been fighting a lot.

Finally, there’s gratitude – telling them what you like about them, thanking them for working hard, appreciating their quirks and funny little ways as well as doing a chore that you know they hate, cooking their favourite meal and picking up the slack when they’re really busy.

No-one said that relationships are easy (well, they probably did, but they weren’t being realistic!), but trying to keep things fresh and helping one another along when things are really tough is a good start and can keep your relationship a loving one, even when you’re facing a lot of different hurdles. It’s really worth trying….

You can see my blogs as soon as they are published (usually on Wednesdays) by pressing the ‘follow’ button and you can share them with your friends. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Instagram (samebutdifferent) and read my FB posts at Same But Different. #loss #depression #mentalhealth #anger #melancholy

Another Toxic Behaviour?

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One of the latest toxic behaviours to raise its head is ‘pocketing’ – the situation where you keep the person you’re dating unseen, not introducing them to your family or friends, or posting anything about them on social media, including them not showing up as one of your ‘friends’. It can include routinely cancelling plans if they involve other friends or refusing to go to family parties as a couple. In other words, your relationship seems non-existent to the outside world.

If you’re the person who’s being pocketed it’s usually confusing and makes you doubt yourself. Why doesn’t your partner want to acknowledge you to the outside world? It stops the relationship progressing as there’s no openness about the person you’re involved with.

There can be a number of reasons for this – if someone is gay and hasn’t come out yet, if they value their privacy above all else, if you come from different cultures and their family might disapprove or if they’re already involved with someone else. Concerns about commitment are often a big part of pocketing too – your partner may not want to be open about the relationship until he or she is fairly sure that it’s going to be long-term.

However, the difference between pocketing and waiting for a good time to be more open is transparency. Working out the right time to introduce someone to family and friends isn’t always easy and doing it too soon can be off-putting for some people but waiting too long makes the other person feel you’re not that serious. If someone doesn’t do any introductions at all, after months of dating, that’s pocketing. It’s about creating distance and space in the relationship.

There’s also the possibility that someone you’ve been dating has been presenting you with a false image of themselves – a façade that they’ve kept up but that will collapse if you meet their family or other friends. They may be scared that you’ll be disappointed if you know the ‘real’ person.

So, if your partner

Never makes plans to see you and meet up with other people
You always meet at secluded out of the way places, never in their own neighbourhood
Makes excuses why you can’t meet their family or friends
Doesn’t introduce you if you run into people they know
Doesn’t talk about people in their social circle and no-one in their family has even heard of you

you’re probably being pocketed!

If you recognise all of this, what can you do? The first thing is not to become confrontational, tempting though that might be. Try to have a conversation where you give them an opportunity to talk about why you haven’t met anyone else significant in their life. See whether you have different expectations about how a relationship looks and whether your ideas about that are compatible.

It may be that it’s this conversation that prompts your partner to confide about family issues that they’ve been trying to keep under wraps – it can even be a relief for them to talk about it and a chance to find the right time and place for you to be introduced.

But, there’s also the possibility that your partner, the pocketer, will be clear about their true intentions regarding your relationship. If you have very different ideas, you then have a choice about whether you decide to stay and see if things change, that they become more open about their relationship with you, or whether you decide to cut your losses and leave before you become even more involved. Remember, you deserve to be valued for who you are and for your relationships to be out in the open.

Check out my blogs as soon as they are published (usually on Wednesdays) by pressing the ‘follow’ button – you can share them with your friends too. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Instagram (samebutdifferent) and read my FB posts at Same But Different. #loss #depression #mentalhealth #anger #melancholy

Trying To Deal With Difficult People?

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Make no mistake, interacting with difficult people can take its toll on most of us and if any of your family members, friends or colleagues have what I’ll call high-conflict personalities you’ll know exactly what I mean!

There are lots of reasons why some people have these sort of personalities – some are deep-seated personality characteristics, maybe from trauma in their earlier lives, but there can be many other reasons and also an element of people recognising early on that being in a mood, flying into a temper or sulking gets them what they want.

As with so many issues, there are three different ways of dealing with this – either you carry on putting up with unreasonable behaviour (along the lines of “if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got”), leave the situation which isn’t always easy, particularly if family is involved, or the option I prefer – dealing with the situation in a different way. Or, in a nutshell – same, leave, change.

If you’ve decided to carry on carrying on, fair enough and, let’s face it, a lot of us feel we have limited choices regarding leaving whether it’s in your workplace where you’re dealing with a difficult colleague or manager or in your family where you don’t want to ‘leave’ as it’s too drastic and you don’t want to lose contact with people you love.

So, first of all you have to work out what changes you want to make and then assess how emotionally mature the person you find difficult is – do they have the necessary characteristics to take responsibility for their actions? Are they emotionally mature? You have to take this into account before attempting any changes which will have to come from you – other people don’t necessarily want to change, but think about it like a game of dominoes where one domino has a slight push and it will activate a chain reaction and cause a shift in other peoples’ related behaviours.

So, how to make changes that will ultimately make a difference – by ‘ultimately’ I’m saying that this won’t happen overnight. Most people are resistant to change and will say things like “What’s wrong with you? You’ve always been okay with this before”.

The first thing is to put down boundaries – if someone’s taking advantage of you and have done so for a long time, they’ll almost certainly be surprised and annoyed if you choose not to do something that you’ve previously gone along with. You could start with putting a time limit on phone calls, not responding to text messages immediately and not replying to e.mails that add a lot of emotional pressure.

Stay calm if the other person starts to get agitated – they will want to tell their story so, if there’s time, let them do that (and trust me, their story will be more important than yours! I speak from personal experience….) and then respond with brief responses if they become hostile. Try not to be emotionally threatening – it won’t help; instead, try to show them some empathy where you can.

However, it’s important not to agree or volunteer for anything in order to fix it. That’s not your job. If you have to distance yourself slightly, do so.

After that, if your sister-in-law asks you to look after her children for the umpteenth time, and for whatever reason, you’re finding it too much, think of a way that you can gently tell her that you can’t do it. (Maybe along the lines of “I’d like to be able to help, but I’m already doing something that day”). If she’s frosty or angry with you, so be it. You have to think about your own health and wellbeing as well as hers.

If the person you’re in conflict with is someone at work and you discover that they’ve given others misinformation or they’re angry when they speak to you, try to provide a firm but balanced, informative response using whatever method of communication that they used, whether this was verbal or by e.mail. Provide accurate up-to-date information and try to remain at arms’ length. Again, as with family members or friends, limit the time spent in discussions.

Although mindfulness and staying in the ‘here and now’ is hugely helpful, at times of conflict it’s also useful to focus on the future and how much better that might look if you can make small changes.

There will be some loss involved because there always is with change. Be prepared for that and let yourself grieve for the relationship(s) that you’d hoped to have.

None of this will be easy, but in some ways it’s an insurance for your future – a time when you don’t succumb to things you don’t want or like and where you can make boundaries and re-discover your own self-worth.