Healthy Versus Unhealthy Relationships - YLAM240028

SPEAKER 1 This program presents ways to optimise health and well-being. When considering lifestyle changes, please consult with your healthcare provider to ensure they are suitable for you. SPEAKER 2 Hello and welcome, I'm Kaysie Vokurka. I'm sure we've all heard the saying that you reap what you sow. And while this proverb can be applied to many situations, today we'll learn how it relates to interpersonal relationships. Stay with us to find out more. SPEAKER 1 This is yous Lifestyle As Medicine, a production of 3ABN Australia Television. SPEAKER 2 On this program we explore ways that you can shape your lifestyle as medicine. Today we are starting a set of sessions on conflict and control in relationships and how these impact our well-being. To cover this important subject, we have a familiar face with us again, health psychologist Jenifer Skues. Welcome to the program, Jenifer. SPEAKER 1 Hi Casey, thank you. SPEAKER 2 Glad to have you with us. We are looking at healthy versus unhealthy relationships in this program and just wondering, What kind of factors lead into this? And obviously, relationships are something which develop throughout our lives. So how does that all come together and start in our experience? SPEAKER 1 It's actually probably a more complex situation as we grow up, as we program how to have relationships and people realize there are so many factors involved from how Well, we're going to look in a minute, conception to birth is one factor, but certainly the environment we're born into, how the parents function, whether there are siblings, how they treat us, the values and beliefs in the family, in society, whether there's a more religious side of it, schooling, all of that helps us develop our relationships. And this is where if we have any sort of trauma or feel insecure during that process, then we struggle with relationships further down the on the track. So this is where I help people to explore that and we often look at a timeline, which is I've used before past, present and future model, but this particular one is specifically on the development of relationships. So we're going to explore that. SPEAKER 2 Yeah, so it starts right back at the beginning. You mentioned before about conception to birth. So that's from the very onset of a new life forming, the relationship element is starting to develop and come. come about? Okay, well take us through more of this model and how it works. SPEAKER 1 Well when you go look at conception, how did, what was that like? Was the couple who were having the baby in love and had a good relationship and it was very much a peaceful process and a bonded relationship, or was it a traumatic relationship? And this can be for many reasons. I mean we often hear of people who sadly were compromised sexually, against their will. And that, of course, is even traumatic for conception. So you can see how that affects. So it comes back to that environment where we are conceived and the parental attitudes. Sometimes you have a parent who doesn't want a child but has a child. Sometimes the child's given up for adoption. So a lot of these variables are totally, totally crucial in those early years. and we just sort of saw there's a model up there that we had a look at, past, present and future. So if you look at the past, when we go from conception to birth, during that gestation period in that particular area there, what will happen is the child is subjected to what's going on for mum. So if she's in an abusive marriage relationship, if she is not happy, she's depressed, she's anxious, whatever that situation if she's happy, if she's really loving, looking forward to having that child, the child is brain and body is already developing under those circumstances. And apparently about a month before the baby is born, it takes on the mother's emotional makeup. So if mum's anxious, then that is being programmed in. Wow. Yeah, if that makes sense. So this is, yeah, this is where it's a very important period of time to set the die for relationships, for security. SPEAKER 2 So this is, I guess it's putting an initial stamp on the child's emotional tendencies and I guess how they would automatically tend to relate in relationships when they get older. I'm guessing that's what's happening. SPEAKER 1 Absolutely. When we look at, again, at that model future projection, what we set in concrete concrete and we're not talking about concrete at that time because anything can change. The child as they grow up, if they're insecure, they can learn to be secure. So this is where once a child's born, birthing itself is traumatic. See this is where as we go through life, there can be many traumas. A trauma for a child once they're born could be that the mother doesn't read the baby's emotions because when a baby is born, it is wired emotionally, the brain is emotional and survival. they cannot think for themselves, they cannot process. So everything they absorb is into the emotional brain and the survival instinct. So if the baby is upset and distressed and crying and mum ignores that or can't read well that that child's distressed and they don't attend, that child is now feeling separated from mum and traumatic. Yeah, so it doesn't, yeah, it's crucial years. Yet if mum then realises after that that the baby was upset and goes and soothes and does it, it actually corrects the problem. So even though mums are going to make mistakes, they can correct it once they realise what the problem is. So this is where there's like the good news and the bad news in parenting. But a child's security has to be embedded emotionally and for the first two years of that child's life they see themselves as still physically attached to the mother. And also they want that secure environment and they're learning to regulate emotions by how mum helps them emotionally. So mum is their model. So this comes back again to what how mum is. If mum's depressed, then the child is picking up on that in those first two years. Even though depression can be genetic, It's also a learned process when you have a caregiver who's also depressed. And I'm not blaming parents because parents love their children but can be in awful circumstances. So this is where we've got to look at the reality of what is that child like and what is mum doing. Because mums aren't given the toolkit, sadly. the way they were brought up is often how they parent. And it's not, and I'll have so many parents who come to me, mothers with adult children who go, oh, I wish I did it differently. And I go, well, you didn't know. Now you know, and now they're doing a lot of good to help their children, even in their maturity, to start to feel secure and build that family relationship. You can build that relationship anytime. It can be with a relative's mother, it can be with a primary caregiver or someone who you connect to as you grow who's a good model for you, the brain can rewire out of the traumatic process into a healthy relationship. So we have that ever-changing brain over that past, present and future process. SPEAKER 2 So here then, the key thing that you're pointing out here is that for an emotional brain to develop properly to maturity, it needs the security of a caregiver Yes. From the start. SPEAKER 1 Yes. That the baby's emotionally attached to and stays connected. And this is where it's very easy for a child or even post to, but pre to, to feel abandoned. And that's where sadly, if mother isn't well and ends up in hospital, then what will happen is that baby feels abandoned unless the baby goes with mum. Right. So this is, yeah, so if mum goes off and does other things and leaves the baby with someone who's not bonded with that child, then the baby feels abandoned. And there's things that a parent can do I advise them to do if they have to leave their child, like leave them with something that is theirs, because the smell and the comfort, you know, give them something to comfort them while they're not there and make sure the caregiver is, you know, there and really looking after that baby. So there's lots of things you can do to, but once you come out of that modelling, And if we have another look at that, yes, that model there, we have models. So your parents, your mother's your first model, then of course you've got siblings and their interaction if she has other children and of course dad comes into it, but dad usually comes into it for the baby a bit later on even though he's there. And some dads become primary caregivers but they're very bonded with their children. Okay, so that means the relationship experience that the child has throughout those formative years years in that particularly that pre-2. So by the time they get to 2, either they're securely attached or they're insecure. So we want secure attachment versus insecure attachment. So at about 2 is when the brain develops, the thinking brain, the intelligence. And this is where the child will start to talk and start to make sense of the world and do things. And if the child's secure at that point, the brain actually is balanced and the emotions are balanced and they can navigate through life and the personality develops in a positive way, in a balanced way. But if they're compromised and they're feeling insecure too, they're not attached, it's like having a ship without an anchor. They can't ground themselves and the caregiver hasn't been doing it. Therefore, that brain, the left-right brain develops differently and the personality develops differently and what it does the personality either then has to take control because when they're insecure and feeling anxious, they've got to have control. So what they'll do is they have anxiety disorders, yes, depression can be part of it, OCD disorders, there's all sorts of those control disorders that children then develop. And the moment they feel a bit insecure or anxious, they put in place, they take control in an inappropriate way. Yeah, they might control other relationships. The personality starts to develop in the wrong way, and hence we have all these personality disorders we see. And I get clients come to me and, oh, I've been told I'm borderline or histrionic or whatever personality, and we work with that because you can change it. The personality can grow and develop at any time in life. If you don't go to control, the other end of the spectrum at about two years of age is the emotional meltdown. And this is where you get the tantrums. SPEAKER 2 I was going to say, this sounds like terrible twos to me. SPEAKER 1 And the interesting thing is, with a tantrum, if you scold the child and remove yourself, they're going to feel more insecure. Whereas if you get the child, and while it's having a tantrum, give it a big hug until it stops. because you're now attaching. You're giving it security and it will stop doing the tantrums because it's feeling secure. SPEAKER 2 Yeah, wow. That's interesting. SPEAKER 1 Simple things we can do even if we're not a parent. Like I used to semi-parent neighbors, a neighbor's children. And they were beautiful children. And if they were with me and they were upset, I'd soothe them and calm them and touch is powerful. this is where parents mustn't underestimate the power of touch. The right touch, where you're a loving touch, a caring touch. Just things like if it's a young child just rubbing the heart area and the tummy or the back, and that soothes a child immediately. So all of those things help a child to learn the beliefs and values we learn. If we have a look back at that model, when we come into the present, we're either we can show and receive healthy love or we feel rejected and we will reject others. All right, so we've got this duality extreme spectrum that we work on and of course we can go from love to rejection. It's a sliding scale, it's not so black and white. If you look at the next variable, our IQ which is inherent will develop but if we're in a feeling not attached and insecure, the IQ will be inhibited. It won't develop fully until we get security back. Now, the EQ is your emotional quotient or your emotional intelligence. And your emotional intelligence is crucial. Have you ever heard someone say to them, oh, grow up. You know, it's the emotional quotient. that is the emotional intelligence and how often people feel like they're still a two-year-old and that's because of an insecure. It might not be in everything, but it might be in certain environments or certain incidents, certain things that happen. And I find when an adult is insecure, probably more females than males will resort to baby talk or, you know, that childlike talk because they're feeling insecure. So they go back to feeling safe, or when there's trauma, Some adults will go into the fetal position. I've seen that before and heard that. So that is where they felt safe and secure. So as adults we can compensate, but we can learn to be secure and that's where, of course, our models are crucial, but who we bond with through life will help that secure, insecure aspect. If we develop friendships where we feel safe and secure, or even if we've had an awful family upbringing, and the reality is there are families that don't function well there's abuse, there's trauma, there's neglect and even just emotionally not there for a child is traumatic. So if the child feels insecure it is going to gravitate to unhealthy relationships because when you're insecure people who pick on vulnerable people will know that person's insecure. So the predator, the controller in relationships will gravitate to that person they know but they're non-verbals, they're verbals. So as you go through life you get this problem. And I get people who have a very traumatic childhood who end up marrying an abuser, have all sort of get raped, have just an awful situation where it goes on and on, they're compromised constantly, and they go, what is wrong? They're nice people, but they're so insecure. So that means I have to help them to understand, I use that timeline, help them to understand where they are in the timeline and to start to work at that that security and that's where nurture and abuse comes into it. Learning to nurture yourself, an insecure person won't, they will abuse themselves and this is where now we have the extreme of self-harm, suicidal tendencies and it's usually around nobody loves me. People don't care about me and this is where a lot of what I do is really about relationships and as a practitioner, if I bond with that person or they have someone else they bond with, it helps them to grow and develop security. It doesn't have to be a parent person. It can be anyone in their life, as I said, a friend or. And I find that's where I can work well with people if they feel connected and safe, because a child who's in trauma, when they grow up, doesn't feel safe. Therefore, they have to fight, flight, freeze and escape somehow. Yeah. SPEAKER 2 That's very, that's, I guess, really encouraging to hear because. Often if a child has grown up in an environment where they haven't had that security from the beginning, they may eventually get it, but they may never get the emotional support they want and they need from the friends or the family immediately around them. So I guess you're saying that someone else can come along and help to fill the gap and restore that that sense of inner security and help that person to heal and then flourish. I guess that's part of what you do. SPEAKER 1 Yes. And this is where the spiritual life of that person, I find when, if they're with God and they're not connecting, then what I do is help them to connect. And we work, because we're body, soul and spirit, and we do have spiritual values. And some people have never had any input on that level. so it's an introduction to a more spiritual aspect. But God heals, you know, our relationship with Jesus heals. He came to heal the brokenhearted. So this is where I find bringing that into it. That is the healing process. And I do have a lot of people who have faith. They might have lost the plot as to where they are, but that encouraging them and helping them to go back to the Bible and to look at the promises and just study more and pray. connect. And connecting with God heals a lot of the wounds and then they can connect with others. So we must not neglect that. There is a healing process and people respond to that, I find. And this is where it's good to share those beliefs and values. This is where we're now looking at beliefs and values and attitudes that we have and giving them some good news. And that's where when you look at the present at the bottom of that, those points is resilience, more vulnerable. Resilience we're not born with, it's to do with emotional maturity. The more we grow, I believe emotionally and spiritually, the more resilient we become. And that's the capacity to cope and to get through the roadblocks in life. When we hit that brick wall, resilience means we hang in there and we have a toolkit, which is what I refer to, that people have and it might be coming back to looking at that model if I'm working with them. Okay, well what happened where and let's have a look. I work very much in the present and then they start to put the timeline together because take them back to that baggage compartment, the unresolved past, and they're not ready will be re-traumatized. So it's looking at how do I function in the present on those variables as what my relationships are like and am I growing beyond my trauma? And look, honestly, we've all had trauma. Even a loving family, we go out into the world. It's a hard life sometimes. I mean, just look at the pandemic we had, the damage that did to families, to children. So how resilient were they in getting through that time and not being so damaged by it? so the isolation, all that sort of, which is very unhealthy for young children. They need social interaction. And so you can see how this works, that we're a work in progress. That's how I see it. SPEAKER 2 Yeah. So obviously when you're working with people to, I guess, first of all, identify some of the gaps that may be contributing to where they are now. Yes. you're working with providing the support they need, but at the same time, you're also helping them to think about their thought processes to identify their underlying beliefs and values, which they may not have analyzed before, but they may have, but you're helping them, I guess, to recognize the impact that's having in their life as well, and maybe reorienting some of those in a new direction. SPEAKER 1 Absolutely, and that's part of what we call that toolkit. And I know as we're going through this series at session four, we're going to look specifically specifically at parts of a toolkit that we can work with, that people watching this can get an idea of what they can do to establish healthy relationships. And I believe all relationships can be worked on, because when we meet someone and have a, whether it be a friendship or a partnership, marriage or whatever, then we've got to work at it. You don't just fall in love and everything's rosy. It takes, we bring our own baggage into it, our own beliefs and values, and we now have to work and come into unison with that person or into union, into unity. So that takes skills and time and effort. And if we don't have those skills and the models haven't been able to demonstrate them, then we can learn them. There's a lot you can do. Boundaries is a classic example. People don't know how to set a healthy boundary. So we are going to look at that as well as we go. SPEAKER 2 Yeah, for sure. Yeah, okay, so that's, I really like it. how you're bringing out that there's so much that can be done to redeem the past, if you will. SPEAKER 1 Absolutely. SPEAKER 2 And that gives us so much hope. SPEAKER 1 It does, you know, I like to give people hope. I have hope because I've come from what I call the School of Hard Knocks. A lot of it was self-inflicted, but it was also a dysfunctional family. They loved me, but we had a lot of problems with sibling rivalry, relationships between people, you know, in the family, Relationship between mum and dad wasn't a healthy one. So I grew up and what we believe and what we learn becomes the model for attracting and being attracted to a relationship. So if we look and the history says, oh, these aren't good relationships, I went for controlling relationships, then we have to reassess ourselves and go, well, why am I attracting that? What can I do to get back that balance? And this is where we're going to look at how can we be more assertive, set healthy boundaries versus submissive, aggressive. So there are different variables and we can learn to do that. We can learn to manage our emotions. That means your future looks much better. Yes. And I have clients who've had terrible, awful relationships and they have actually dealt with a lot of their issues and they've then been attracted to and attracted a beautiful relationship in their life that they've had that love and that nurturing that they missed out on. So again, it gives hope. to people that what you change in the present projects your future. SPEAKER 2 That's really, really important. SPEAKER 1 Yeah. SPEAKER 2 So obviously we've talked quite a lot about how when you don't quite feel the needs in the beginning, you have these effects later on. But what does it look like if we actually put all the right blocks in place from the start? Can you give us some an example about that that will help us see that what do we, like I'm thinking about mothers out there who they've got a new baby or something, how can they give the child what's the best start? SPEAKER 1 Well certainly touch and nurturing that baby and being responsive to its needs because they're non-verbal in like tears or smiling, googling all these things. So just being attached to that child and realize for the first few years that child needs total attachment to mum. So giving that as well as integrating with the family, it's not about isolating, but mum is the key figure so that's important. But if a child is loved, perfect. I mean, parents have meltdowns, have bad days, they might have go to work and come home, they're irritable, they react. And, but if the mum sees it's affecting the child, they'll go and talk to the child, even if they're a toddler. Children understand tone of voice. They learn. So explaining, don't think a child doesn't understand, they do. So communication throughout that early childhood, correcting things or helping them to come to terms emotionally builds resilience at a young age. So that means they will not be perfect in any relationship, but they will grow in a relationship. SPEAKER 2 That's really important. Now, I think you have, do you have like a poem or something I think you were wanting to share? I think we just have time for that. SPEAKER 1 This is a beautiful poem about children learn what they live by Dorothy Law Nolte. And it really made sense to me. It says, if children live with criticism, they learn to condemn. If children live with hostility, they learn to fight. If children live with ridicule, they learn to be shy. If children live with shame, they learn to be guilty. And if children live with encouragement, they learn confidence. And if children live with tolerance, they learn to be patient. If children live with praise, they learn to appreciate. And if children live with acceptance, they learn to love. If children live with approval, they learn to like themselves. And if children live with honesty, they learn truthfulness. And if children live with security, they learn to love, have faith in themselves and others. And if children live with friendliness, they learn the world is a nice place in which to live. SPEAKER 2 Beautiful. That says a lot in and of itself, you know, all of the things to input into a child's life. That's really, really special. SPEAKER 1 Yeah. SPEAKER 2 Oh, thank you so much for sharing that with us, Jennifer. And you've really given us a beautiful overview of what is important from the start of our lives, but then also what we can do even if we haven't had the best start. So we look forward to exploring that with you more in the next few sessions. Thank you so much. We've been talking with health psychologist Jenifer Skues about how healthy and unhealthy relationship patterns develop in our lives. We've learned that much of what we experience links to what was sown to us in childhood. In the next episodes we'll talk about the use and misuse of power and control in relationships and how this affects us. And this will be very relevant for everyone, so please join us for these conversations. If you have questions or comments about this program, or if there's a topic you'd like us to discuss, contact us on [email protected] and remember to shape your lifestyle as medicine. SPEAKER A You've been listening to Your Lifestyle as Medicine, a production of 3ABN Australia television.