2 Questions for Assessing Your Relationships

In my free video training, Should I Stay or Should I Go, I give you a checklist of red and green flags to help you self-assess your relationships.

It includes a list of behaviors that threaten the safety and health of your relationships, as well as a list of behaviors that truly support intimacy, belonging, and connection. (Check it out here.)

At the heart of it all, there is only one red flag that really matters, and it lies in your answer to these two questions:

1. Can you have an honest, loving, and respectful conversation with this person about anything, no matter what the content is?
2. Are you both equally committed to personal insights, personal growth, and to each showing up differently as a result of this conversation?

If yes, congratulations! You’re in a safe, secure, growth-enhancing relationship that is likely to meet many of your needs for belonging, intimacy, and connection.

If no, ugh, I’m sorry. You’re in a distressing relationship where you’re engaging more through your defenses and self-protectiveness than through your heart, joy, or vulnerability.

It’s that simple.

So, what do you do if you’re not in the kind of relationship that you long for?

Start with yourself.
Remember: inside change for outside impact.

Putting aside all temptation you may feel to analyze and understand the other person, and ask yourself some deeper questions:

1. Boundaries for safety: What boundaries do I need to set for my own well-being that I’ve been afraid to set? How can I increase my courage and boundary-setting skills? Let’s trust ourselves to keep ourselves as safe as possible, and stop exposing ourselves to unnecessary harm.
2. Emotional alchemy: What feelings am I avoiding feeling or trying to manage in someone else? How can I lean into a wider range or emotional experiences without shying away from them? Let’s develop our collective capacity to be both exquisitely attuned to emotions but not enslaved by or controlled by seeking or avoiding any particular emotion. Once we’re able to feel our widest range of feelings without becoming reactive, we connect and empathize more deeply with ourselves and others.
3. Personal integrity: What’s my personal vision for my relationships? How am I bringing the very qualities and responses that I am hoping to get from others? Once we stop trying to change, fix, and control other people, we personally become safer people to be around. Once we reclaim our attention and energy to change ourselves (instead of others) we begin to live from more inner peace, equanimity, and joy.

Dr. Yvette Erasmus is a psychologist, teacher, and consultant who specializes in transformative education for human healing and growth. Synthesizing mind-body medicine, somatic experiencing, diversity and inclusiveness, nonviolent communication, and integral-relational-cultural psychology, Dr. Erasmus integrates core insights from multiple wisdom traditions and offers various programs for community learning as well as one-on-one consulting. To learn more, visit yvetteerasmus.com.