5 Top Tips for Improving Communication with your Partner.
Leanne Alston is an Accredited Psychotherapist with a special interest in building and maintaining healthy relationships. Leanne recognises the challenges we face in our day to day lives and is a huge advocate of providing simple, easy to implement tips to improve wellbeing and mental health.
Being a parent is hard and can bring ever-changing challenges to life and relationships, having great communication skills can make navigating these challenges so much easier and boost a sense of teamwork in your relationship. Here are Leanne’s 5 tips for improving communication with your partner when you have children:
Make Space.
Make space for important conversations away from your children. It’s important that you can speak freely and openly, stayed focused on the key issues and prevent stress levels from escalating. If it’s not possible to have a conversation straight away, plan it in.
Go for a Walk.
Important or difficult conversations are best managed in person. There is no question that parents are super busy people with so much multi-tasking to do and because of this, it might feel like a quick stress reliever to share your thoughts, stresses and issues by text message. Unfortunately, texts are open to misinterpretation, delayed responses or no response at all, they can also catch the receiver off guard if they get a serious message out of the blue. Practice talking with your partner in person, it might be helpful to go for a walk. A side-by-side conversation can feel less emotionally charged and feel easier to navigate that a face to face discussion, and time in nature will help reduce the stress levels.
Dance, don’t Fight.
Conversations can feel like a boxing match, each person fighting to get their point across and not listening to the other perspective. It can quickly escalate, and conversations turn into rows.
Instead of boxing, think about turning conversations into a smooth, flowing dance by taking turns. Each person gets the opportunity to speak, the listener reflects back exactly what they heard, they ask for clarification and then asks questions to understand further. Once this step is completed, the other person gets their turn to lead and the dance continues.
Watch your Defences.
In difficult conversations, when stresses are high, it’s easy take things too personally and listen defensively. When we only notice the parts of the conversation that feel like a personal attack, we miss the bigger picture and resolution becomes impossible. Notice if you are listening defensively and take a few moments to decompress before returning to the conversation and trying again.
Couples Therapy Can Help.
Sometimes you may need some help to work through issues in your relationships and that’s okay. Couples therapy can provide a space to unpick your struggles and help you move towards your relationship goals. Contact Well Minds PTS if you would like to speak to us about the couples therapy we offer.
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