Trouble-Shooting: Relationships
When you are living a functional medicine lifestyle, you are probably very tuned into your food choices, your exercise routine, how you manage stress and you make a concerted effort to prioritize your sleep. Sometimes, there’s another piece to the puzzle – one that actually can interact with each of these other areas – relationships.
Is your life filled with healthy, supportive relationships or are you burdened by relationships that drain you and add stress?
Did you know that relationships have the power to improve or harm your health? It’s true! Here are just a few relationship – health connections:
- Strong social connections have been shown to lower rates of anxiety and depression.
- healthy relationships can help to strengthen your immune system, help you recover from disease, and may even lengthen your life
- Loneliness can lead to disrupted sleep patterns, elevated blood pressure and increased cortisol (one of the stress hormones). Loneliness is also a risk factor for antisocial behavior and suicide.
This post is meant as a check-in of sorts on this often overlooked pillar of functional medicine. We have already tackled sleep and stress management. Now, we’ll tackle relationships. We’ll get to diet and exercise last because those are more often covered by everyone else. I wanted to hit on the topics that are often over-looked.
Working to surround yourself with people who support you physically and emotionally is a key component of self-care.
Remember that self-care is a mindset – looking after yourself the way you would look after a loved one. This definition of self-care is especially pertinent when we look at relationships. An important part of self-care is making time to connect with those you love, those who encourage you and make you feel good about yourself.
On the flip side, maybe for you, self-care involves time away from certain relationships.
So how do you go about improving relationships in a way that supports your health goals? In light of the holidays in particular, I am hoping that these suggestions will be helpful.
Set healthy boundaries – most of us have a family member who leaves us feeling less than or brings out the worst in us. We generally don’t have free rein to abstain from these relationships 100%, but you can work to limit your exposure or get another family member on your side who can run interference for you. At the end of the day, you have to protect the relationships that matter most and if that nosy aunt or pushy father-in-law is threatening to wreak havoc on your relationship with another member of the family, it’s time to set up some boundaries.
Heal old wounds – are you carrying a grudge or feeling guilty about the way you have behaved in a relationship? Remember that you can’t dictate how someone else will behave or receive your words, but finding a way to reach out and apologize if necessary in a way that is healing to you can help you release old hurts and maybe even rekindle a special friendship.
Learn to communicate your feelings effectively – telling the other person in the relationship how you feel can be scary, but also very liberating and almost always better than keeping it bottled up inside. Do you need time together? Time apart? Feel like you’re always the one who calls? If the person really loves you and values your relationship, they want it to work as well and have a vested interest in meeting you where you are. Be gentle and humble, but honest, directly explaining your needs.
A few quick Relationship self-care ideas:
- To nurture your relationship with your spouse, try to greet them when they arrive at home the way your dog would greet you – that is with unbridled enthusiasm and joy.
- Plan a friend date
- Pick up the phone and call
- Send a card in the mail – just because you’re thinking of them
- Offer compliments – be sincere, but still free with the encouraging words
- Be sincere and vulnerable. When one person opens up and shares something personal or hard, it encourages others to do the same and often, deep friendships are the result
As always, I’m here to help! If you feel like maybe an unhealthy relationship is holding you back from the level of health you desire, it might be time for more one-on-one work with me, as your health coach. See the package options I offer here.