Do you want to know how to control your emotions in a relationship?
I'm Nicholeen Peck, I'm a communications and relationships expert and in this video,
we're going to be talking about just that.
In this video, I'm going to share with you four steps that you can do to control your emotions
in a relationship and make that type of connection that you want when you need
to really be understood. Because isn't that why we lose emotional control in our relationships?
We're trying to be understood. We're trying to help the other person see where we're coming from
and for some reason or another we just missed the mark. Step number one, might surprise you. In fact, it
might seem like this isn't actually going to help but I promise you this is probably one of the most
powerful steps that I'll share. Step number one, is to have a vision of what type of a relationship
you want to have. In fact, ideally, you create this vision with the other person that you're having
the relationship with. It could be with a child, it could be with a spouse, it could be with a good
friend or someone you're dating. What type of a relationship do you hope to have with that person?
when I say vision, I don't just mean a list of qualities. I mean, envision yourself at a happy time
a time that you hope to duplicate on a regular basis. In my book, Parenting A House United, I talk
about creating a family vision. This is a picture that the family shares together of who they're
becoming 20 years in the future and we base our vision on certain criteria, certain things that
the whole family can hold on to and work toward as we go through the day-to-day moments in our family.
So, create a picture, create a vision of who you're becoming in that relationship. Now if
the other person doesn't want to have that type of a discussion with you then you can decide for
yourself what your vision for the relationship is. Because actually, something that people don't often
know about relationships is they're one-sided, did you know that? So the way you see another
person is fully your responsibility that's your relationship to them. The way they see you
is their relationship to you so they have full responsibility for that. So if you're not feeling
very good about them then you need to change that perspective first by creating a picture of where
you want that relationship to be headed. Step number two is to plan for meetings.
So, once you've decided what type of relationship you want to have with that person or with your family.
Then decide when you're going to check up on how that relationship is doing. So in our
family we have key meetings. In fact, part of the teaching self-government parenting course involves
setting up three different types of meetings. We have couples meetings, family meetings, and
individual mentor meetings. These are all designed to check up on different relationships and how
we can improve at our relationships and problem solve and communicate better. So, when are you going
to have meetings and how are you going to have an effective meeting. you've got to decide that. If you
need help learning how to have a good effective meeting the type where everyone can feel united
and bonded together. Then you might want to look into this book, Parenting A House United written
by me and it goes into great detail even gives you meeting formats that you can use in order to
have good meetings for your family. The third step for controlling your emotions in a relationship
is to have your own calm plan. Do you have a plan for how you will be calm? I have created a plan for
myself. In fact, I created this plan a long time ago when I was doing foster care treatment care for
troubled teens. I had two toddlers of my own and we brought troubled teens to live in our home. We
did this for a number of years and there was often times a lot of dramatic situations that I needed
to help the children through. But I knew that I would not be able to point them in the right
direction if I was just power struggling with them. So, I decided to create a calm plan for myself.
This calm plan included having specific words that I would say to myself and to other people.
In fact, during that time I took a recipe card and I wrote down what my calm parenting plan was. So,
I now have cue cards on my website that people can actually have and they can use to help them with
their calm plans. If they want to use my same calm plan. You will need to learn about the steps of
calmness and I have a freeway for you to find out about those steps. Below this video there is a link
to the calm parenting toolkit and if you click on that link you can get the comm parenting toolkit
for free. In that calm parenting toolkit, it will help you start to put together your calm plan
and then you can use the cues to help you follow through with your calm plan so that you don't
get stuck doing your old habits which maybe are taking you away from calmness. If you're going to
have a good relationship with another person you need to know you can trust yourself to
communicate calmly. It's really us not being able to trust ourselves that ruins the relationship
and the communication with the other person. vof us have emotions that's part of who we are.
In fact, it's just part of being human but there are productive emotions and non-productive emotions
and those not productive emotions are the ones we want to stay away from because they don't help us.
In fact, lots of times they end up hurting us or making us feel like we are serving our emotions
instead of our emotions helping us to bond to other people. So, if you know that you have not
productive emotions that happen to come out from time to time and they can damage your relationship.
Then a key thing you should do as step number four in preparing for good relationships is to
make sure that you and the person you're having a relationship with know where your stop points are
and maybe even develop some cues that you can use in order to prepare yourself not to cross
over certain boundary lines. So, step number four is plan for stopping places and cues. So, what I
would do maybe with my husband, for instance, is say, "If I start to say", such and such whatever it is.
"If start to accuse or assume then let's say this word, so that will remind me I need to stop and
pull myself back", with my children I've taught them to use one of the four basic skills that I teach
in my parenting program to help me know when I'm not being calm or have gone too far. So the skill
is disagreeing appropriately. I've taught them that if for some reason mom is not communicating in a
calm way. If I'm not having a calm face voice and body which I've taught them to have, then they need
to look at me and calmly say, "Mom, may I disagree appropriately", and then I will immediately remember
I am not using my skills. I will say, "yes", because I told them that every time they ask that question
I will tell them yes and then they'll say, "Mom, I understand right now you're frustrated
but you're not choosing to be calm. Could you please choose to be calm?", and then that will
give me the cue that I need to get myself calm and ready so then I need my calm plan to fall back on
right. I've got to have the steps to take myself to calmness so that then I can come back and finish
that interaction with them. So, you need to plan with the person that person you're having the
relationship with. You need to plan with them how you will stop when you will stop and if there's
any keywords that they can say that will help you to remember if you happen to get trapped in one of
those minutes just out of habit. We absolutely can control our emotions in our relationships
it is up to us. We can enlist their help but it's also up to them to control their emotions and we
can help them too. That's what a relationship is all about. If we talk openly about our plans
for communicating better in our relationships then our emotions will not get the better of us.
Let's use our productive emotions and connect to each other instead of relying on negative
not productive emotions all the time to try to solve our problems. If you've enjoyed this video,
I'm pretty sure you're gonna like my next video which is, the expectation trap versus
the cycle for success. What we're talking about here when we're talking about our emotions and
our relationships is we're talking about how we get trapped. I have a lot more information I can
share with you about that. So watch that full class on the link that you see here