Fighting with your spouse is readily acknowledged as one of the biggest challenges of marital life. It is often as if couples are from completely foreign countries and do not understand each others financial culture. Yet when the fighting ensues, there is often much that is provoked just below the surface of the argument that is creating the real challenge. These issues below the surface can be related to past suffering. In the September/October 2014 Journal of Marriage and Family Therapy article titled Family Therapy and The Science of Compassion author Laura B. Wallace highlights the importance of building compassion for improving family relationships. She says "Compassion means seeing and responding to suffering". How we see the problem before us and how we respond will in large part determine the outcome of the argument.
Take a minute to reflect:
How compassionate are you?
How compassionate does your spouse think you are?
What would change in your life if your level of compassion increased?
These are important questions to grapple with. I trust that all of us have room to grow in our ability to provide and receive compassion, especially when it comes to interacting with our family and finances. When our compassion grows, our ability to engage in the difficult topics of our marriage and money will increase.
The Stanford Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education has helped advance our understanding of the role of compassion in developing deeper levels of connection in our lives.
The center identified three types of compassion, which are; compassion for others, receiving compassion, and self compassion. Of these three types of compassion which is most difficult for you? What blocks you from experiencing compassion in this area of your life?
As we focus on building the three types of compassion, the solutions that we need to our problems will start to emerge. Sadly as long as we are not experiencing compassion, the pathways to finding positive solutions to our problems will be difficult to find. In counseling the idea of unconditional positive regard which parallels compassion is a key ingredient in helping people grow. Many therapists have found that once a person feels accepted for who they are and where they are, that then becomes the place that the person starts to experience the freedom to move forward in their life. There is an implicit trust that the solution is within the client, and that from experiencing unconditional positive regard the client will feel (not just think) like they can move forward.
My experience tells me that each of us has an easier time with one area of compassion and struggles with the other two. However, if we are not experiencing the three types of compassion then we are not experiencing the fullness of compassion. I see this often playing out in the caring professions, where the professionals have great compassion for others and will spend endless hours serving others, but will not take the time for themselves, or receive care for themselves.
As we slow down to reflect upon compassion for others, receiving compassion, and self compassion what feelings are being evoked in you? What types of resistance are you experiencing in your gut? Become aware of these responses and try to put names to them, as they are what is going to help guide you into deeper levels of compassion. Our resistance points are what will block us from giving and receiving more compassion.
Ultimately compassion is not something that is so much talked about as it is experienced through touch and tone/quality of voice. Growing these areas can help add substantial quality to your relationships. As our levels of compassion for our spouses and ourselves increase it makes approaching the difficult subjects of family finance all the more easier.
What are those areas of family finance that have felt unsafe to address? Hold this experience in your mind, now go to a place in your mind where you have experienced compassion. What did you experience with compassion in another area of your life, what was stirring in your body? Now how can you hold onto those summoned up experiences, and focus on addressing the family finances. Go slowly and with compassion in mind as you try to address the family finance issue at hand.
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