John and I featured in Austin Fit Magazine's 'Influencers in Fit Biz' Oct. 2019 Issue

John and I were honored to be featured in ‘Influencers in Fit Biz’ for Austin Fit Magazine’s October issue…thanks AFM!
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John Howard and Peter Craig are psychotherapists who specialize in helping their clients thrive in life and achieve personal goals such as having healthier relationships, relieving stress, anxiety and depression, and finding deeper meaning and purpose in life. John is originally from New York and moved to Austin in 2004 to join his wife, an Austin native. Peter grew up in Louisiana and found his home in Austin after attending UT. He especially loves Barton Springs, where he swims and plays his guitar a couple times a week.

John trained with world-renowned couples therapist Dr. Stan Tatkin of Los Angeles for over eight years, and eventually taught with him alongside many top names in the field of psychology. He offers the newest methods in relationship improvement including neuroscience-informed couples therapy that helps partners retrain automatic habits to deepen connection.

John is also the Founder and CEO of PRESENCE, a comprehensive psychotherapy clinic that combines counseling with yoga, mindfulness, nutrition, genetics and functional medicine. The first of its kind in the world, PRESENCE opens its doors October 2019 and helps you have a healthier mind, body, spirit and relationships.

Peter is a beloved coach, poet, musician and therapist in Austin who radiates warmth and kindness throughout his community of friends and colleagues. A true renaissance man, Peter is also a triathlete, meditation instructor and is recording a new album with his band in his spare time. A gifted therapist, Peter leads counseling groups and works with individuals and couples.

John and Peter have been on a mission to de-stigmatize mental health care, educate the community, and make therapy ‘cool.’ Their approach, which focuses on personal growth, letting therapy be fun and offering engaging workshops, has resonated with the Austin community and brought them attention as thought-leaders in mental health and wellness. Austin Professional Counseling offers empathic, science-based care and houses some of the city’s top therapists.

https://www.austinfitmagazine.com/October-2019/influencers-in-fit-biz/

It's Finally Okay for Men to go to Therapy

“It’s my first time in therapy” is something I hear increasingly often in my office. By men. All kinds of men, young and old. Men struggling with relationships, out of control behaviors, anxiety, or depression. 

The tide has turned. The stigma of therapy implying weakness or major mental illness is no longer strong enough to impede many men who want to talk with someone and get support in taking action. What great news! As more athletes, celebrities, and musicians speak up about mental health and the challenges they face, men seem to find it increasingly socially acceptable to reach out to someone. That’s significant progress, because men tend to reach out to counselors when depressed much less often than women (and let symptoms worsen- sometimes to the point of no return). I am writing this article in hopes of continuing to inspire men (and everyone!) to seek counseling when they need it. Having the courage to admit that you need support is the opposite of weakness. Therapy also allows you to explore how you can improve your situation with work, home life, or friends, which can make your life feel much better!

Outdated masculine archetypes paint the ‘superhero’ man as invulnerable, stoic, rageful, or unemotional. Generation after generation have raised men not to explore their emotions- feelings of sadness, loneliness, or hurt, out in the open. Instead men have been conditioned to often suppress these feelings, unless they are socially condoned ones - anger, numbness, or sometimes sexuality. The result is hurt people hurting people. Violence, physical and emotional abuse, a lack of empathy- these problems continue to be reproduced in homes and in society at large. 

When our emotions are consistently diminished or undervalued growing up, we learn to form defenses around feelings, whether on the high end (i.e. ‘I guess I won’t feel exuberance any more if I keep getting yelled at for being so excited’), or on the low end (‘It’s so painful to hear “Stop crying!” so many times I guess I have to harden myself somehow against this sadness’). These defenses protect us from ‘unbearable states of aloneness,’ but they come at a cost. We may not get to the root at why we have a hard time connecting with our partner. For example, unconscious emotions of disappointment or resentment may not be felt and therefore not recognized to be processed together. Repressed emotions can also keep us from our sense of confidence and vibrancy and impact how successful and effective we can be at work.

Our defenses against certain emotions help us survive, but can limit our ability to thrive. If we were shamed or invalidated as a child for emotions outside the ‘normal range’ in our family, we may have learned to tuck those emotions away or not feel them at all after a while. Such lack of emotional support and validation may have made us feel alone in our emotions, even scared and confused by what to do with them. Such family patterns around emotion are then easy to replicate, causing us to handle emotions in similar ways to how our parents did with us growing up. Those patterns can perpetuate inter-generational trauma, however. With more awareness and training, we can break those cycles and give the next generation more emotional range and tools.

How do we stop the cycle? We can begin to cultivate more kindness toward ourselves, which necessitates the ability to be curious from a place of non-judgment with how we’re feeling instead of immediately recoiling or dissociating from our emotions. Men can see emotions as valuable parts of their experience that are connecting and stress-reducing to share. Rather than thinking of emotional sharing as ‘something women do,’ men can understand how helpful it is to share sadness with a friend, for example. We can learn to tolerate previously unbearable emotions, and train to notice emotions that cause irritability under the surface of our conscious experience. As we continue to allow ourselves to feel difficult or uncomfortable sentiments of grief, disappointment, or longing, we welcome previously dissociated parts back into our self. The ‘adaptive energy’ from these emotions brings vitality and new possibilities, potentially even rewiring outdated beliefs like we’re ‘not good enough.’ This is the stuff of healing--of good therapy.

As more emotions are welcomed and explored, we integrate previously unresolved emotional pain in a way that leaves more open space inside of ourselves. This translates into a greater ability to feel the full range of human emotions without becoming dysregulated--scientific speak for not flipping our lid and breaking down to more primitive behaviors that often sabotage important relationships. Such sabotage can include shutting down in conversations or getting overbearing or aggressive. We can learn to feel frustration with our partner and others and still talk about our challenges reasonably. We can learn to interact assertively with others without seeming arrogant or enforcing our opinion in a rigid way. Increasing our emotional intelligence allows us to reach more of our life goals by making sure the people in our life are happy with us and that we have the skill to navigate stress and challenges.

There is a cultural history of men repressing their emotions in order to appear ‘strong,’ yet even the military and special forces have acknowledged how important it is to share and have support to remaining a high-performer and continuing to function. Feelings consume energy, and many men have a tendency to drink heavily, withdraw emotionally, or self-medicate to deal with the stress. However, many men are prepared to learn how to deal with their emotions more productively. They may know that they tend to drink more when they feel criticized, alone, or experience grief and loss. Rather than consuming alcohol excessively, or shutting down, it is good practice to breathe and witness a sense of loss or pain and seek emotional support from others. Such practice builds important internal ‘muscles’ that help us be more resilient to stress and life’s ups and downs. Such a practice might also open a deeper willingness to see a professional therapist and discuss mental health issues in greater depth.

As we learn to notice, value, and express more of our inner experience, our authentic self emerges in a way that invites deeper connection, greater creativity, and more fulfillment in our lives. No wonder more men are seeking out therapy! And, it’s about time.

Peter Craig is a psychotherapist with Presence Wellness. He offers individual, couples, ketamine-assisted therapy to help his clients achieve healthy minds and thrive at life.

Create Deeper Connection workshop

I had the pleasure and honor of facilitating a workshop to cultivate deeper connection with Jade Bryce (who came up with the idea and did the marketing and co-hosting with me) and Mercedes (who is co-host of Jade and her podcast The Majic Hour- My episode is #19).

As you may know, connection to me is one of the most important things in life, so getting to guide 40+ people through games and exercises to practice vulnerabliity and creative expression was a thrill and joy!

I told the flier makers to change my title to ‘Relationship counselor’ because ‘expert’ seems too braggadocious but they didn’t update the fliers…

We did a 30 minute podcast interview on connection and intimacy…stay tuned for it to be published in the next month or so!

Cultivate Wellness podcast interview: Relationships, Marriage, Mental health

My friend Brad Swail (his dad started and owns People’s Pharmacy, Austin’s ‘favorite pharmacy’) interviewed me on relationships, marriage, mental health, and therapy in general.

You can give it a listen here!

Recalibrate Mind, Body, and Fuel: Speaking on panel 9/9/19

I had the honor of speaking on a four person panel about the psychology of healthy eating, exercise, and overall wellness with one of my mentors Charlotte Howard!

Check it out here (pasted below):

We look forward to having you come Recalibrate with education, meditation, and community!

Kick off September with Austin experts in psychology, nutrition, and fitness as we talk all things modern mind, eating, and exercise. We'll debunk dieting misnomers, cover eating practices rooted in whole-body, brain-gut health, dig into important intersections of mental and physical health, and share realistic practices that provide real impact.

We know that eating and exercise can feel clouded by the latest trends and buzz, so we're jazzed to be delivering some refreshing clarity behind topics like:

• What factors of psychology most strongly drive our eating and exercise habits? How does everyday mental health directly impact our physical health?

• What do we need to know about today's most popular nutrition topics like keto, intuitive eating, food-as-medicine, anti-anxiety and anti-inflammatory eating? What dieting misconceptions or misapplications can hinder us more than help us?

• What are top *realistic* ways to identify / implement changes in eating / exercise that are healthy to our bodies and minds? How can we use mindfulness as a daily tool for optimal awareness and health?

Our rockstar panel of experts and their bios are below. In addition to the panel, we'll lead an opening meditation, closing takeaway activity, and raffle giveaways from RIDE Indoor Cycling, TruFusion, Stok'd CBD Water, and Autonomy Movement!

Agenda:

• 5:30p to 5:45p - Arrival + connecting

• 5:45p to 6:00p - Opening meditation

• 6:00p to 7:15p - Panel + Q&A

• 7:15p to 7:30p - Closing activity + giveaway raffles!

Snacks / drinks:

• Local Graze Love will be providing a handcrafted graze board showcasing carefully crafted cheese and charcuterie, along with seasonal and dried fruits, nuts and olives

• Stok'd, another local brand, will be providing samples of their refreshing CBD sparkling water

Education, meditation, and community for #healthyminds!

About the panelists

Ali Miller, RD, LD, CDE is a Registered Dietitian with a contagious passion for using nutrients and food as the foundation of treatment protocols and programs. Ali has influenced millions through the medical community and media with television, print, and her award winning podcast, Naturally Nourished. She is the author of Naturally Nourished (2016), The Anti-Anxiety Diet (2018) and her newest book The Anti-Anxiety Diet Cookbook (2019). Her Food-As-Medicine philosophy is supported by up-to-date scientific research for a functional approach to healing the body. Ali is a renowned expert in the ketogenic diet with over a decade of clinical results using a unique whole foods approach tailored to support thyroid, adrenal and hormonal balance.

Peter Craig, MA, LPC-I bridges all things psychotherapy, fitness, and wellness of mind, body, and spirit. Peter is a psychotherapist at Austin Professional Counseling, a JuiceLand-sponsored triathlete, a regular contributing author to mental health columns in Austin Fit Magazine, and an expert in experiential mindfulness. Peter is a certified coach in the psychology of eating, helping clients with their relationships with food and overall wellness goals. Peter received his Masters in Counseling from St. Edward's University and his Bachelor's in Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin.

Dr. Charlotte Howard is a psychologist and co-owner of Deep Eddy Psychotherapy, a practice of 29 clinicians here in Austin. She specializes in a variety of practice areas including self-love, confidence, stress, and social anxiety - providing a holistic approach focused on mind, body, and spirit. In addition to being a leading individual and group psychologist in Austin, Charlotte has presented at the American Psychological Association, been published in several national and international professional psychology journals, trained other clinicians in specialized fields, and authored the book Awaken to Love. Charlotte completed her doctorate in Counseling Psychology on a full fellowship at the University of Iowa and holds a Bachelor in Arts from the Middlebury College in Vermont with a major in Therapy as a Synthesis of Mind, Body, Spirit & Sense of Place.

Shveta Moller, MHA is a multifaceted expert in wellness, food, and finding daily balance amidst a demanding daily corporate life. Outside of her full-time work, Shveta is the curator of @top_austin_restaurants and the owner and blogger of @atx_bites, is a certified Integrative Nutrition Health Coach, and has lived a personally transformational journey in her relationship with food. Full-time during the week, Shveta is as a Project Manager in Fortune 500 management consulting for Sense Corp, leading consulting project teams and often traveling for work. Shveta additionally holds a Master's in Health Administration from Texas Woman's University and a Bachelor's in Biology from the University of Texas at Austin.

Check out our Monthly Mental Health Column in Austin Fit Magazine!

Photo by YourPerfectHeadshot.com

You can inquire about scheduling a session at AustinProfessionalCounseling.com/Scheduling.

Hi everyone, great news! …My boss John Howard and I have a monthly article online with Austin Fit Magazine since September of 2018. We are on a mission to bring more connection into the world and help make mental health services less stigmatized. Feel free to check out the articles below or share them with someone you love. Each month is a different theme.

You can grab a free copy at some locations around Austin, like Castle Hill Fitness on N. Lamar or the downtown Whole Foods.

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April 2019 - How to Create a Loving Home

March 2019 - How Animals Help you Heal

February 2019 - The Power of the Mind

January 2019 - Elevate Your Mental and Emotional Health in 2019

December 2018 - How to Stay Sane During the Holidays

November 2018 - The Qualities of Good Lead ers

October 2018 - What Giving Looks Like in Relationships

September 2018 - Nature Boosts your Mental and Emotional Health

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…Which one is your favorite so far?

Relationship Health Part 3: Practicing Awesome Relationships

In this series we are highlighting the supreme importance of having healthy relationships to our overall health, fitness, and wellness goals. Multiple studies have shown a clear and strong correlation between relationship satisfaction and mental and physical health. What many people don’t know is that the most effective and efficient way to improve our relationships is to actually practice. Say what? That’s right. Relationships, surprisingly, are like everything else in life—we don’t get better if we don’t train, and train hard. The benefits, however, are outstanding. In fact, getting better at relationships doesn’t just improve the relationships themselves, it tends to help us become more fully developed and intelligent individuals as well.

Relationship happens at a very fast rate —not the arc of a relationship—but actual interactions. They’re like playing the piano, or playing a sport. When we interact with other humans, most of our behavior is in the form of automatic, pre-thought actions and reactions. In order to get better, therefore, we have to train those fast, automatic circuits—the ones we tend to call our “relationship habits.” Training at our relationships is exactly like fitness training—it requires practicing the right skills, over and over, with dedication and intention. The result is that those automatic, implicit systems in the brain and body respond with increased skill. Practice helps integrate neural circuits in the brain, and allows energy to flow more efficiently between mind and body. 

Here are three ways to engage in the kind of practice that delivers results:

  Be present. 

We live in a crazy information age—a world saturated everywhere we look with sound, video, news, social media, and the varieties of digital activities. The problem is our nervous system hasn’t adapted yet to the technological age, so many of our relationship connection systems are gauged to simpler, human-to-human interactions. In order to practice having a closer bond, begin by noticing how fully present (or not present) you are. Do you give your partner your full attention, or are you often multitasking? Do you say “Hi!” then look away fairly quickly, or do you hang in your partner's eyes long enough to see where the interaction can go next? Turn off the TV and the radio, put away your devices, de-prioritize social media, and turn to the humans in your immediate vicinity. With your partner, face him or her with your body, and don’t let your focus waver. This sends an incredible message: “You are the most important thing to me.” The human attachment system doesn’t like to compete too much with other things, and your full presence helps answer many of the subconscious questions than sneak into our minds in relationship.

  Use muscle memory. 

There are some disciplines in life where fake it until you make it actually works, and relationship is one. It may seem awkward or weird to try out different relationship responses and habits, but you’re remapping your neural circuits when you do that. It might feel cheesy—like you’re in a soap opera—when you’re practicing showing vulnerability, making more eye contact, or asking about emotions and trying to deepen intimacy—but part of the process of growth is getting past those awkward humps until connecting behaviors feel more natural.

Much of what needs remapping in order to handle the complexity and speed of relationships smoothly is our implicit memory, which includes procedural (motor) memory. Actually trying out new relationship behaviors—rather than just reading a book on relationship health or talking about new habits—gets motor memory engaged, leading you to improve faster at those important connecting skills.

  Practice the right skills. 

“Fake it until you make it” works much better if we’re practicing the right skills that actually deepen connection. You don’t want to go to the gym three times a week and practice the wrong exercises or use the wrong motion. Instead, practice the connection exercises that have the most positive impact. To gauge these, consider what behaviors make you feel more safe and secure with your partner. Practice those, and ask your partner to do the same. There is additional magic in practicing together. That magic has to do with how the brain learns (very relationally). You can take a difficult scenario and game plan for how you could do it better as a couple, then repeatedly role play that new way of doing things. It may seem weird, but it works. We don’t learn to play the piano by talking about the piano, right? We have to play.

Relationships are critical to our sense of health and wellbeing as well as our physical health and fitness. Along with a focus on diet and exercise, relationships need our dedication and attention in order to grow and improve. Relationship training not only benefits your relationships, it makes you a more whole, developed person as well. There is inherent friction in the merging process we call relationship. Combining and sharing different perspectives and habits between two people requires expanding and growing ourselves to understand and inhabit more of the known world of experience.

You can think of relationship growth as brain booster, which it is, but you can also think of it in spiritual terms: We’re becoming greater than the individual perspective and habits we had, and that makes us more whole. Mental and emotional health are increasingly being defined by the level of integration between different systems of mind, brain, and body—with relationship practice serving a primary way to develop that integration. From complexity tolerance to anxiety management, we become better individuals as we learn to navigate relationships more smoothly. We hope this little series has encouraged you to make relationship training a regular part of your overall wellness and fitness regimen. Your body, mind, life, and family thank you!

You can also seek out a relationship counselor or use our relationship training program Ready Set Love® (readysetlove.com) to learn and practice the most effective connecting exercises that develop relationship skill. 

http://www.austinfitmagazine.com/June-2018/Relationship-Health-Part-3-Practicing-Awesome-Relationships/

Relationship Health Part 2: How to Deepen Connection

In this three-part series, we explore some powerful steps you can take to up your relationship game!

Last issue, we explored ways to increase your relationship health and emphasized that relationship health is a key factor in overall physical health and well-being—just as much as exercise and nutrition! In Part 2, we’re going to focus on connection as the key ingredient to a highly fulfilling relationship. We often think of communication is the key to a healthy relationship, but modern neuroscience begs to differ. Connection in relationships is largely determined by lower-level circuits in the brain and nervous system, not the higher areas that engage in complex thought and reasoning. Here are some powerful tips to help you deepen your connection—and therefore the overall health—of your most important relationships!

1. Connection thrives on a sense of safety.

In fact, many relationship scientists theorize that humans largely get into relationships in order to feel more safe and secure in the world, and not so alone. Safety and security are measured by simple parts of the brain and nervous system. Those parts don’t understand philosophy, or speak English (or any other modern language). To speak “connection” to the nervous system, scoot in a little closer to your partner when you talk; use touch, like a hand on his or her arm or shoulder; or hold hands when you talk. Make a little more sustained eye contact, and speak with your tone of voice more than your words. Put it all together (and avoid those delays where your partner asks you a question and you don’t look up from your email for three seconds), and you’re speaking connection to the nervous system!

2. Did you know the process of how you talk is more important to relationship health than what you’re talking about?

A powerful way to work out your relationship health muscles is to focus on the process of your interactions more than the content. Focusing on the process simply means paying attention to how it feels to interact, moment by moment. Many of us put the focus on what we want to say or debate, but words and concepts can easily stress the nervous system. When you want to feel connected, slow down, check in with one another on how it’s feeling to talk, and switch up how you’re interacting if needed. Propose going on a walk to change the scenery (and your state), or rubbing each other’s feet while you talk. Once the process of interacting feels great, the content will make much more sense!

3. Don’t underestimate the power of emotions to connect!

Many of us dismiss emotions as irrational artifacts from the right hemisphere of the brain, yet they are supreme in their connecting ability! Both positive and negative emotions can help you deepen your bond, but only if you respect them, validate them, and play along. Positive emotions seek amplification, the process of having others join us in those uplifting emotions so we can celebrate feeling great together. “Negative” emotions, like anger and sadness, need to be expressed and shared in order for us to feel like others “get” us, even if they come out a little exaggerated. They seek validation and empathy. Use vulnerability to express both positive and negative emotions by owning your experience. Be careful not to project all your feelings on others or blame others too much for how you feel. A masterful move is to use a positive invitation to ask your partner for support. Something like, “Hi, sweetheart, you’re so good at making me feel better when I’m down. Would you spend some time talking with me, holding me? It would mean a lot.” Then, even our frustration has a healthy process in which to be explored! afm

Stay tuned for Part 3: Practicing Awesome Relationship, in the next issue!

John Howard and Peter Craig are therapists at Austin Professional Counseling. They use the latest science to help their clients win at relationships and at life. John is the Founder of Ready Set Love® , a 12-week couples training program you can take online. Peter is a sponsored triathlete on Juiceland’s Dream Team and helps individuals and couples with authenticity, connection, and healthy eating.

http://www.austinfitmagazine.com/May-2018/Relationship-Health-Part-2-How-to-Deepen-Connection/

Peter Craig is a Licensed Professional Counselor Intern (LPC Intern) and has a Masters in Counseling (MA) from St. Edwards University. He works with John Howard of Austin Professional Counseling. 

Supervised by Sunny Lansdale, Ph.D., LPC-S
Treaty Oak Psychotherapy
5524 Bee Cave Rd.
Suite A-2
Austin, TX 78746
Tel: 512-329-0332

Relationship Health

Austin Fit Magazine just published an article that John and I wrote for their April edition! A three part series even! :) Really honored and excited to be a part of this mission to mainstream mental health. 

Please enjoy Part 1 on relationship wellness.

[In this three-part series, we will explore how to take relationships to the next level. part one describes some practical tips on improving the interactions with our partners.]

We all know diet and exercise matter to living a healthy life, but what about the health of our relationships? Multiple studies show that the quality of our relationships is a very significant determinant of our overall wellness, our immune system function, our psychological resilience, and even our lifespan! In fact, more than one prominent study found that our relationship satisfaction may impact our health even more than diet, exercise, smoking, or alcoholism—and that includes real physical health markers like waist circumference and diastolic blood pressure! Do we have your attention?! 

Assuming we all agree that relationship health is one of the keys to living a healthy, happy, and long life, what do we do about it? The answer to that for many of us is…nothing. It’s not just us—we’re living in the midst of a massive social failure in relationship education. None of us get a class on relationship health, so we’re basically flying blind, keeping our fingers crossed, and hoping for the best! Luckily, there are some practical things you can do to increase your relationship health:  

1. Think of relationship health as part of your overall wellness. Many of us focus on diet and exercise as keys to health. We need to invest just as much—if not more—in the health of our relationships. If you go the gym three times a week, take your relationship to the “gym” at least once a week. Set aside regular time to talk and bond with your partner. Don’t neglect it! Our nervous systems tend to get stressed the less connected we feel with our loved ones, and stress is unhealthy! In fact, stress not only degrades the productivity of our workouts and prolongs recovery time, it also wreaks havoc on relationships themselves. One powerful tip is to closely watch your stress and anxiety levels when you’re interacting with your partner and ask for help or support the moment you notice a spike. It brings you together and helps you focus on feeling relaxed with each other!

2. Quality over Quantity: Use the time you have together with your partner wisely. Make more eye contact. At the end of the day, we’re just fancy mammals. Our nervous systems calculate connection and safety in fairly predictable ways, including using eye contact to gauge many markers of connection. It needs a little more time engaged in that activity than we often give it.

3. “Welcome Home”: Dr. Stan Tatkin of UCLA Medical School developed this neuroscience-based exercise that uses the body’s subconscious connection circuits to help prevent arguments and help you feel connected. Here’s how you do it: When you’ve been apart for a while (like after work), greet each other with a hug and no words. Let your nervous systems connect, belly to belly, for 10-15 seconds or more, until you relax into one another. Believe it or not, this helps the fight or flight neurons in your gut sync up with one another—a powerful marker of connection. 

Hope you enjoyed these tips! Stay tuned for part two in the next issue, which explores how to deepen connection. 

John Howard and Peter Craig are therapists at Austin Professional Counseling. They use the latest science to help their clients win at relationships and at life. John is the Founder of Ready Set Love®, a 12-week couples training program you can take online. Peter is a sponsored triathlete on Juiceland’s Dream Team and helps individuals and couples with authenticity, connection, and healthy eating.

How to Feel Closer to Your Partner in 8 Steps, Based on Neuroscience

It seems as though we are witnessing a crisis of dis-connection. We have more relationships in this global digital age, but are they more meaningful? We may have many friends on Facebook, but perhaps barely feel like we can call anyone on a daily basis to share our struggle. This has led us to put even more pressure on our partner to satisfy all of our needs, possibly straining this most valuable relationship. Here are eight steps you can apply now to feel closer to your partner than ever and make it last.

1. “Being able to feel safe with other people is probably the single most important aspect of mental health; safe connections are fundamental to meaningful and satisfying lives.” – Bessel Van der Kolk, Pioneering Psychiatrist¹

Being able to feel safe with your partner is so important, yet we don’t hear people talk about it much. It’s usually “communication is the key,” but if you don’t feel safe, you probably won’t feel connected; consequently, you likely won’t be able to communicate as effectively. Connection always trumps communication. The good news? Skills of connection can be learned and practiced! Remember: safety fosters connection.

2. Feelings of safety and trust come from a basic sense that you have your partner’s back and they have yours.

Do you feel like you’re the go-to person to help soothe your partner, lift them up, laugh, and work things out together? Share your stories of the day? If you don’t think that’s the case, perhaps you tend to withhold love or do subtle things to sabotage genuine connection. Did you know there are things rooted in neuroscience you can do with your partner to make them feel safe?

Look your partner in the eye and speak from your heart. Say something about how much your partner means to you, or how much you value them. This may seem rote or forced, but practicing it earnestly can result in profound changes for both of you. Our neuronal and psychological security systems look for direct, obvious signs of commitment, loyalty and support. We’re often too in our heads to fully convey the message to the nervous system, unless we follow the next step.

3. Be in close proximity (ideally stomach-to-stomach or eye-to-eye), use touch, speak in a gentler tone of voice, and gaze into each other’s eyes for as long as possible.

All these things foster connection, which increases your ability to communicate and decreases the likelihood of wires getting crossed. Did you know that you have more neurons in your gut than your spinal cord? Being gut-to-gut with your partner communicates on a physiological level that they are there for you and you are there for them. Additionally, this intimate connection encourages you to be fully present with each other. So now that you’re hugging your partner and relaxing your whole body into their embrace, what’s next?

4. Take responsibility to do your best to make your partner feel better.

In this age of hyper-individualism where we’re competing against everyone, can you take responsibility to take care of your partner? To always have their back? Acknowledging our interdependence requires maturity. We are born into the world completely dependent and may die dependent, but relying on others has been seen as weak in this culture of toxic masculinity.

To embrace our vulnerability, I invite everyone out there to be open to exploring and expressing emotions with your partner. Often, we get stuck inside our own heads and lose touch with our bodies and emotions, making it harder to connect in a more meaningful way. Brene Brown’s work shows that when we take risks to share ourselves vulnerably, we increase our likelihood of getting the connection we long for, even though we may not always get the response we want.3

5. Accept your partner’s ‘bids for affection’ as much as possible and offer them ‘bids of affection’ in return.

If you were to tell your partner about a song you love on the radio, and they just continued scrolling on their phone, would you be upset? You could call their lack of response ‘turning away from the bid for affection.’ If they said, “that song sucks,” well yikes, that would certainly be turning against your bid. Research on couples show that you ideally turn towards your partner 5 times for every time that you turn away or against.4That way your ‘supportive love bank’ stays positive even when you have conflicts, which are inevitable. Each bid gives your partner the opportunity to respond in a way that says I’m listening, I care, and I’m interested in understanding you. Each bid you give offers an opportunity for your partner to respond similarly. Look for these bids and respond with interest whenever you can.

6. The most important thing that we have is our attention. Give your partner the presence that they deserve.

With all the complexities of modern living and electronic screens, can you be present with someone for more than 30 seconds? Can you care enough AND have the resources to respond in a spontaneous way to what’s in front of you? The more attention you access, the more you will be able to know when to move closer and when to give them space. When to ask them for something, when to not. Present attention gives us more information about what’s happening in real time. Otherwise, as animals, our brains automate who we think our partners are (and everything else).

Our brains automate our reality because it takes so much more energy to use our higher centers of reasoning (prefrontal cortex), so we make assumptions about it. We guess, and often we miss. Being present–being able to notice nonverbal and verbal cues moment by moment–opens the doors to greater connection. This authenticity opens us more fully to the good in our relationship as well as the inevitable challenges.

7. It’s important to make up after a fight as soon as possible. The longer unresolved issues go, the more a lack of safety gets imprinted into long term memory.5

That being said, if you’re in a conflict and one of you becomes so overwhelmed that you can’t continue communicating reasonably, neuroscience research shows that it’s important to take a minimum of 20 minutes time to let the nervous system cool down. Oftentimes, one partner will want space – which the other partner may resent and perceive as abandonment – but with greater understanding of a time out practice, you will be able to navigate those dynamics more effectively to both not take the need for space personally AND repair the disconnection quickly. Now that we’re repairing disconnections, deepening our presence and attention to one another, and making bids for affection (and kindly receiving them!), it’s time for the last step.

8. Get clear on shared values, goals, dreams, and lifestyle preferences together.

Not only are shared values one of the 6 principles of sexual health (the others being consent, non-exploitation, prevention of unintended pregnancy/STIs, honesty, and mutual pleasure6), they are essential to a long-term relationship. Why? Every day you need to reaffirm your connection (even through the seemingly mundane); if you don’t feel like you’re sharing the same direction, it’s easy to drift apart and silently let resentment and anger cultivate.

Take the time to be intentional about what you want to bring into your life – more specifically, what your partner can do to soothe, support, and challenge you in ways that help you grow to be the amazing person that your partner already knows you are! This can be as simple as a 10-minute conversation about the future every few months or could include writing down dreams and goals together through creative collaboration. This also includes having the difficult conversations about money, kids, sex, etc. (but now from a place of deeper connection, right? *Gazing into eyes*).

Conclusion

In the end, we all know relationships take effort. People can be annoying. Life can be better when we pair up, and even if it’s just a little bit better, isn’t that worth it? Consider pro-actively working on your relationship by being more deliberate about how you spend time together. Put a nice dinner date or outdoor adventure on the calendar.

Seeing a therapist trained in the latest neuroscience research can help you practice building a deeper connection with your loved ones (some techniques are mentioned in this article), and help you to overcome old patterns that no longer serve you. It takes courage, practice, and coaching to make positive changes and momentum towards a more fulfilling life.

Schedule a session with Peter here.

https://www.austinprofessionalcounseling.com/peter-craig-feel-closer-to-partner-neuroscience/