Relationship Doctor

Here we will show you how to be your own relationship doctor and heal all areas of your life. As we grow and mature as adults, we can come to a point where we realize something important to us emotionally is missing. We desire a change to make our life more complete, however we do not know which way to turn. We are at a crossroads. All we may be sure about is that there is an unmet and yet undefined need we wish to address. That is what we will talk about here, as we look at our incomplete associations, and how to be our own relationship doctor.

Welcome to our website. Thank you for visiting. We hope you find the answers to you or a loved ones’ emotional need here. Nothing more defines our life than the associations we have with others, through family, friends, and employment. The most definitive single factor in our quality of life is not our income, or even our health, but is in the quality of our associations with those around us. Either they can bring us joy and freedom, or they can hinder us with a constant barrage of rejection and humiliation. For most of us, we realize our associations with others are a tool to help us see the beauty within ourselves, and we use these associations to enhance our personal freedom. For some of us, the opposite is true, as we see our associations as a prison and a coffin, as we feel held there by our captors with shame and abuse. We choose to remain in these associations out of fear, and the belief that we do not deserve better.

Before we can fix our friendships, we need to understand what friendships are, and what their role in our life is. If we understand that, then we can fix the problems at the source, instead of just masking over symptoms.

Let is look at the types of our relationships, for they are all not the same. They come from two completely separate sources; there are those we are born into, and those we create. Moreover, there is a strong connection between those sources, which you must understand as well. The relationships of Origin will act as a pattern for the relationships of Choice, and that is where the problems lie. Remember these sources of our associations with all others in our world, either Origin, or Choice, for they will be important later! Yes, there will be a test!

Familial

The first type of associations is Familial and is the only type of associations that is relationships of Origin. All other associations are relationships of Choice. Your parents or original family, or the lack of one is the source of all you believe about yourself. If you had good parents, then you will learn that your associations with others are a tool to serve you to get your emotional needs met, and that is as it should be. You have learned that when a friendship causes you pain, then you disconnect from the friendship, for it is not a friendship, it is abuse. In our familial settings, we learn either a associations is to serve us, which is good, or we learn we are to serve the associations by being a victim, which is bad. Familial associations are the strongest in creating all of our reality, including health, financial, and vocational, for the rest of our lives. All other associations with others will copy exactly the quality of our first associations, and duplicate its nurturing or its poisoning characteristics.

Romantic

The second type of our associations is romantic. This type of associations will indicate two things; first, how we see our self as a sexual person. In other words, how we relate to human sexuality and how complete our association is with our mother if we are a boy, or father if we are a girl. Second, it will tell us how complete our self-definition is. If we feel unrecognized for who we are, then we will project the need to be sexually attractive into all associations and as such all of our associations will have some sexual context to them, even if not appropriate. What we feel ignored for as an individual we will seek to make up for in being recognized for being sexual. We exchange the money of personhood respect for the more understood currency of sexual interaction, since that is the only way we feel we can gain acceptance.

Non-Romantic or Sibling

The next type of association is non-romantic or sibling. This association would be all close relationships with the opposite sex. These are what we call little sister associations for men, and big brother associations for women. The fact that they are not sexual is what makes them so very intimate, for it removes all need to be anything other than what the partners are, which their true authentic selves. Persons who have strong boundaries and who are emotionally complete often have many close friendships with the opposite sex, who is not their spouse. This is good and emotionally healthy and contrary to popular belief in religious circles, will never lead to affairs or infidelity.

Gender

Gender type associations express our feelings about ourselves as a man or a woman, as we gather together with our own kind to bond and identify. We bond with our own in athletic or special interest endeavors to find our individuality as the gender we are. Men may play football in a league or ride dirt bikes, and women may exercise together or seek a female only activity in any number of areas. Strong associations with our own are a part of our human experience at some point on our lives. We may not do it for our entire life, but for a season. In addition, we may do it whenever we need to reinforce our gender identity from time to time. Like the non-romantic or sibling type above, these associations are never sexual, nor lead to any homosexual tendencies in any way. In fact, the gender reinforcement recognizes our identity as a person without the sexual context, and makes us stronger emotionally for it. Men need male bonding, women need female bonding, to make them feel complete, and that is as it should be.

Junior to Senior

Junior to senior associations are the first of two types of associations that express our connection to our culture. The first is our connection to our heritage, and our desire to learn those skills and insights from our seniors. There is also the equally strong need for the approval of those whom we see as superior to us. Purely peer-to-peer associations only contribute to our sense of our individuality, but add nothing to our sense of connection to our culture and to our heritage. Junior to senior and senior to junior associations give us this sense of culture. We all want to be more than an individual, we need to feel we are part of a culture or society, and be like all others as well. We need to know that we meet and exceed our society’s values, and that we as individuals represent that which our culture stands for. We need to know that we represent our society in its most wholesome and positive form. This healthy need is the basis why we wish to excel in school, join girl or boy scouts, join the military, and compete in youth athletic events. We need to feel like others see us as personifying all that which is good and pure in our community. Junior to senior and senior to junior associations give us that sense of our commonness, while sibling, gender, familial, and romantic give us our sense of differentness. We must have a strong sense of both sides of our self. Our elders’ strength and wisdom is what we respect in them and we wish to emulate some personal variety of that in ourselves. Hero worship is a good thing, and we have every right to imitate aspects of others, which we admire in the expression of our own individuality.

Senior to Junior

Senior to junior associations are the second of the two types of associations that express our connection to our culture. This second association is our connection to our posterity; the first was our connection to our heritage and our past. The urge to parent or mentor others we see as being below us in stature is a natural extension of our humanness. All of us to some extent wish to comfort and instruct those below us, and to teach them what we know. This is our godly side, and is our spiritual urge to further our culture. We as seniors wish to impart to those behind us knowledge we know, and the lessons of wisdom, which we have gained over our years. This is our way to gain immortality, because we seniors all know our influence will last longer than we will. We take pride in that. Oftentimes these associations form the basis for permanent relationships, even after the initial need has past. They may start as teacher to student, supervisor to trainee; coach to competitor, or even between two competitors or workers in a common cause, where an inequity exists in knowledge and skill level between the two. Strength is what we wish to impart to them, as we become their teacher, mentor, or guide. Taking someone under our wing is emotionally healthy and a responsibility most of us take very seriously.

Okay, we have covered a general overview of the types of relationships, so that you can see which associations you have had, or perhaps needed to have in your life. Perhaps you can see a type that is missing, or can see how in one of those associations someone used it to hurt you or a loved one in some way.

Now we will get to the relationship doctor part

Diagnosis

Here we will show you how to diagnose your associations no matter what type, for its condition and how to heal or replace it. It is important not to make this part too complicated with a bunch of characteristics, and listing many this-or-that’s. It is simple to boil it all down to a single spectrum, which reduces further to either good, or bad, fixable, or beyond repair.

All relationships are on a spectrum of totally poisoning and abusive or fully loving and nurturing and all points in between. It does not matter the reason at this point, for we are only looking at the summary of its health overall. Let us say we have decided some are unhealthy, unacceptable, and that they need fixing or termination.

Now for some more insight, your current relationships are reflections of your self-image. This Image reflects either your low self-esteem or high self-esteem. Your relationships have no life of their own, for they only mirror that energy you feel about you, and what you feel you deserve. Relationships that seem hideous are shadows of an equally hideous self-image. Relationships that are nurturing and loving are reflections of the self-love that starts within. Your high self-esteem and godly self-image allowed you to choose loving nurturing others to reflect that same self-love back to you. Low self-esteem convinces us to choose poisoners and losers to neglect and shame us, for we feel we deserve that as well.

The part that needs fixing in our relationships is our low self-esteem, which is how we see our self. If we need others to build our self-image, then where did the hurt feelings and the broken spirit come from in the first place? All hurt feelings and sense of unworthiness originate in your parental relationships, or the lack of them, for they created your self-esteem. While we are on the subject of hurts, let us look at hurts for a second. Go to your kitchen and get a sharp knife. Cut yourself deeply in the arm with that knife to see what will happen -just kidding! When you incur a hurt on your body such as a cut or bruise, what will happen is that over time it will heal and go away. Many of us think that a similar thing happens for unmet needs from our childhood when we experience disappointments and things that break our hearts. The cuts from emotional pain never go away, until we get those needs met as adults. Our emotional needs for love and attention never go away, because we cannot just forget about them.

There are two things that we must feel when we are growing up, and they are:

Getting our growth achievements applauded by loving adults, and getting all of our selfish nurturement needs met.

If both of those things do not fully happen for us, that will create a condition of very low self-esteem and a terrible self-image. This deformed self-image acts as a knife. What is more, the event of the knife cutting your arm physically, which hopefully you did not do, is what you will duplicate in a relationship repeatedly, as you cut yourself emotionally. Bad relationships are knife cuts that you keep doing to yourself intentionally with your mind.

Let us get back to your relationships that you have diagnosed as being in need or repair or termination.

What do we do next, and how do we fix them or terminate them? Our associations are both poisoning and abusive or they are nurturing and deifying, or some point in between. What constitutes their poisoning and abusiveness? The health of relationships comes from certain specifics, which now we can get into. If you cannot find these exact characteristics in your questionable relationships, then go with your gut feelings. If the relationship does not feel like a good nurturing relationship, then it is not. Your feelings and needs are the final say in the matter, period, regardless what the other partner may say.

Sometimes due to persuasion from our deceiving partners, we cannot put what is bothering us into words. Here are a few suggestions as to what to look for in describing a poisoning and negative relationship.

Control of any kind or implies of a strong rank structure

Threatens rejection if

Abuse or threat of

Unspoken or common shared denials such as ‘we do not talk about that’

Lack of permissions

Crossed boundaries

Having to see things the same way as the other person

Restriction of any of personhood rights, which are

Seeing things through your own eyes

Thinking your own thoughts

Feeling your own feelings

Making your own choices

Denial of personhood space: not allowing you to be alone or with others in relationships as you need to, away from them

Alienation from outside world or others in any way: painting the outside world or life as too evil or too uncooperative with too many dangers, portraying themselves as the protector of all members

An implication for allegiance to the group

Put prices of any kind

Ignores presence as you enter the room or calls you ‘son’ or ‘child’ instead of your name

Fail to meet emotional needs: refuses to give recognition of your deepest self

No freedom to expand, grow or change

Now we need to change gears and talk about why we experienced hurts in our life, and why we deserve shame and abuse. We must not be lovable; otherwise, God would have given us good parents, right? Hurt feelings never heal by themselves, why is that? Is it because we do not deserve to get over it? Parental neglect is actually a message from God. All life’s events have a first or initial message and an underlying deeper message. The obvious message is that you are evil, and deserve neglect and abuse. That is the first or Satan message, and that is where you are at now. The underlying message is the real message god is trying to tell you, but he is making you have to work to find it. He does that so you will learn the real message about his love for you and your true value, power, and thusly your responsibility as an individual.

You deserve better than your present state of unhappiness, you are worthy of a life that gets your emotional needs met. What is more, God is trying to tell you that you have the power to change this. God is trying to point out you must start exercising your will, and act in your own right to protect and grow your self-interest. If you are worthy, and you have the power of choice to enforce your wishes for nurturing in relationships, then what is the next thing, can you guess?

If you deserve better, and you have the power to change your relationships and your life, then it would follow that you have the responsibility to change it and get your own emotional needs met, as well.

God could not teach you this without first giving you this need as an example.

First, God wants you to know that you deserve better.

Convince yourself that you deserve better and then your empowerment will come to see new friends, which He will send into your world.

Convince yourself that you do not deserve abuse and humiliation and then your strength will come to correct the current relationships to meet your emotional needs, or disband them.

All emotional strength is just permission you give yourself to meet your own needs.

God is trying to teach you that it is in your power to get your needs met for love and nurturement from those other people you choose to have as friends, loved ones, and employers.

You have the same right as does everyone else to get your emotional needs met.

You have the power to get your emotional needs met for love and nurturement, through positive choices. Separate from losers, you do not need them, and seek nurturers.

Therefore, it is your responsibility to wield your power for your own self-interests and not depend on another person to do it for you.

Remember that relationships are reflections of not how much others love you, but of how much you love you. Your self-love is God’s gift to you, for it is a facet of God’s love. God cannot show his love to you any more than you let him, have you ever thought about that?

Affirm your worth, I deserve better than this, and then take the steps you need to correct those negative relationships. You have God’s encouragement to do so!

Remember, correction can be from healing present associations by asserting your rights, or by disbanding them entirely and replacing them with new ones. In each case, it is your choice.

That is how you can act as your own relationship doctor

Think Big

Rarely do we limit the damaging choices in our personal world to just maintaining ineffective relationships, Because of our bad self-image, our bad choices simultaneously affect all of our lives at the same time. If you are considering changing the quality of your relationships, because of poisoning characteristics, chances are you need more than just a relationship doctor. You also need a career coach for possible employment improvement, and a life coach for assistance with time management, health and nutritional, and self-talk as well. The good news is none of those will cost you a dime, and they can exist right inside your head. You can create and train your team to work full time to help you be the best in all areas of you life, not just in relationships alone. Do you not deserve to have, and be, the best in all areas of you life, not just in relationships?

Hire your team, give to each member names and personalities, and put them to work. The next time you feel the urge to give in to a bad decision, ask yourself this: ‘would Jennifer, my relationship doctor approve of me loaning this hard luck abusive loser my car and credit card?’

The point of all this is to instill in you a priority and a perspective that you or a loved one has overlooked, and that is the self interest of the most important person here, and that is you. Relationship doctoring and healing is simply about remembering your self-interest is the most important thing in your relationships, which is as it should be. Other persons make choices in their self-interest, and so should you. Where common ground exists, then a permanent relationship will happen, and where no common ground exists, no association will develop. Let life and nature take its course and your nurturing relationships will evolve.

For more on this subject please consider our first in series book Overcoming Depression from Emotional Abuse/The Tools of Your Mind. In it, we take you through your spiritual journey back home to your Original Self. We talk about God's purpose behind that soul’s journey, as we follow our heart’s dreams to our ultimate destiny. We answer many questions about selfishness, prosperity, psychotherapy, and finding our dreams and happiness. We share much about boundaries. We also talk about the spiritual controls we have within to bring our good to us. Those controls are our Sincerity Switch, Spontaneity Switch, and lastly our Feelings and Dreams Switch.

Thank you for visiting us today and please keep in touch, sharing your trials and your victories with us. We promise to answer personally every Email that we receive.

Shayne and Lori North in Aurora, Colorado

Overcoming Depression from Emotional Abuse/The Tools of Your Mind The Book

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