3 Ways Even The Strongest Couples Fix Toxic Emotions That Creep In
Regulate your negative emotions and rediscover the core of love.
Dean Drobot | Canva Our emotions are like most things. They're not bad, except in excess. It's natural to experience anger, fear, anxiety, disappointment, resentment, judgment, and guilt. However, negative emotions become all-consuming, toxic, and devastating to our emotional health and intimate relationships if we fail to deal with them effectively.
A major challenge of long-lasting relationships is productively dealing with negative emotions. When feelings like anger are held, they tend to accumulate and build harsher emotions like resentment, while the other partner will naturally feel judgment and guilt. A cycle of negativity becomes routine and threatens the stability of the relationship.
Here are 3 ways even the strongest couples fix toxic emotions that creep in:
1. Take personal responsibility for your emotions
Blaming someone else for your emotions, how you feel, or the emotional state of your relationship isn't the responsible thing to do. Research conducted in 2018 reinforces how both sides need to acknowledge their contribution to the emotional state of the relationship and communicate their concerns effectively.
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2. Shift your focus and emotions
Make a conscious decision to focus on what you love, appreciate, and are grateful for about your relationship. Make a list of your top ten relationship moments. Keep your list with you at all times. Make it a habit to take ten minutes each day for a mental vacation.
Also, allow yourself to re-experience all the positive feelings you initially experienced in it. You can retrain your brain to focus on the real experience emotion from memory so it will release all your "feel-good hormones" as if you're really in the moment, as shown in a 2006 study. Notice how much more positive you begin to feel the more you practice this ritual. It's true that what you focus on, you feel, and get more of.
3. Be mindful and in the present
Take a deep breath, close your eyes, and take yourself back to the very first time you experienced a feeling of love with the person you're in a relationship with now. Allow yourself to re-experience the emotions, the sights, the sounds, the tastes, and the smells you first experienced. Using the senses has a powerful effect on emotional regulation according to 2023 research.
Stay there for a moment and allow yourself to feel where in your body you first felt their love. Is it in your heart? Is it in your head? Is it on your lips? Focus on what your mind was focused on then. Bring to mind all the details of the moment you knew they were the focus of your love.
Do you notice how good it feels to be emotionally present with the one you love? What questions run through your mind? Did you find it easy to take yourself back and re-experience the falling-in-love feeling again? Has it been a while since you felt the feeling of love?
You can shift the focus of negativity in your relationship and look at it with love. It sounds simple, but it requires an effort from both sides involved and a determination to be more emotionally self-aware while communicating from a place of compassion and strength.
Nancy Philpott is an RN, pain relief coach, cannabis educator, and chief transformation officer for the Compassionate Care Project who is passionate about helping women caregivers and their daughters connect with cutting-edge information and resources to relieve chronic stress and pain and resuscitate health.