Better Together

Have you ever had an argument and thought, we've had this exact conversation before? Same words, same tone, same ending. One of you raises your voice and the other goes quiet. Or one of you wants to talk it through right now, and the other needs to leave the room. It is like a dance, one moves and the other follows.

It doesn't only happen with partners. Maybe a colleague always seems to push your buttons in meetings, or one friend leaves you feeling unheard every time you see them. Or you're a tax-paying adult, and five minutes after arriving at your parents' house you feel like a sulky fourteen-year-old again (or maybe that's just me).

That dance is a pattern. And patterns are surprisingly sticky.

Why do we keep doing the same dance?

Patterns aren't a sign that something is wrong with you, or with the other person. They're usually old strategies that once kept us safe. If speaking up as a child got you into trouble, you may have learned to keep the peace and swallow your needs. If the only way to be heard was to shout, you may have learned to push hard. These strategies made sense back then. The problem is they now run on autopilot, in situations that are nothing like the ones they were built for.

When we feel criticised, ignored or under pressure, the threat system takes over. Our bodies go into fight, flight or freeze before our thinking brain has caught up. The other person reacts to our reaction, we react to theirs, and round and round it goes. Each person's way of protecting themselves sets off the other's.

That's why it helps to remember that nobody is the villain. The cycle is the problem.

It only takes one person to change the dance.

It's easy to believe that things can only get better if the other person changes. If only my partner listened more, if only my manager were less controlling, if only my sister stopped criticising. Waiting for someone else to change can leave us feeling powerless.

Relationships work more like a dance than two separate people. Each person's steps are partly a response to the other's. So when one person changes their step, even slightly, the other can't keep dancing in quite the same way. If you usually go quiet and instead calmly say what you need, the conversation has to go somewhere new. If you usually push and instead take a breath and get curious, the other person has less to defend against.

This doesn't mean it's all your responsibility, or that you have to fix everything alone. It means you have more influence than you might think. The other person may resist at first, because familiar patterns feel safe even when they're painful. But when you keep showing up differently, the relationship often starts to shift around you.

How I can help

In therapy, we slow the pattern right down so you can see it clearly, without blame. We explore where it comes from, so it makes sense rather than feeling like a personal failing. We pay attention to what's happening in your body, because you can't think your way out of a reaction your nervous system has already started. And we work out what you need underneath it all, so you can ask for it clearly and kindly, without blowing up or shutting down.

Over time, the old reactions loosen their grip, and you have more choice about how you respond.

What's coming up in Better Together

In this series I'll share practical, down-to-earth ideas for relating better with partners, family, friends and colleagues. None of it is about having perfect relationships, because those don't exist. It's about finding your way back to each other, more quickly and more kindly, when things go wrong.