GUTS
RESILENCE
INSIGHT
TENACITY
GRITTY THERAPY in Newport Beach,
California
New relationship bliss
Your new relationship started amazingly well. Euphoria city!!!! Everyone is noticing how happy you are and you know it is because of this new relationship.
However, a few months into your new and blissful relationship, you are trying to ignore the tiny rub of impatience you have felt in relationships before. Minor differences become big irritations amplified in your mind, despite how hard you try to push them away.
You try to deny it, but you are sensing internal rumblings strangely familiar to how you felt in your last relationship.
Do you want to be in a relationship with your clone or another individual?
Why is it that every time you notice a difference in how you and your partner view the world, you feel a slight panic?
Are we too different? Is this a red flag? Is there something wrong with me?
You are trying not to notice subtle (and not so subtle) differences (e.g., “You secretly wonder if your partner voted for Trump …”) and the initial euphoric feelings start to waiver. “Why can’t this person be more like me?”
You believe you have the right perspective on handling stressful situations, so why doesn’t your partner listen to your advice? You tell yourself that your way is not always the “right” way.
But you can’t stop judging and believing somehow that if your partner were more like you, everything would be back to bliss.
For example: “Why can’t my partner be more of a quick decision-maker like me? Why does every decision have to be talked about ad infinitum?
Am I that much of a narcissist that I think everyone should behave and feel exactly as I do?
As time goes on, it becomes increasingly difficult to sustain intimacy and joy in your new relationship. You get impatient and frustrated when your partner has different ideas and opinions than you do.
You ask yourself, “Why am I so put off when I notice my partner handles life’s challenges differently than I do?” Maybe it is because it is easier to criticize your partner than to look at yourself. But if you are always judging people in your head, maybe it is your thinking that is off somehow.
If You Are Waiting for “Someday” to Get the Life You Always Wanted, Make “Someday” Start Today!
Deep down, you wonder, “Am I the common denominator?”
If so, this is great news because the only person you can change is yourself.
“I knew Dr. Roth really knew me and understood my needs when she could pin point, with precision, my blind spots and areas that I need to really work on.”
If you are causing the same negative patterns to re-occur in your relationships, you are the common denominator.
You may have to face the fact that you are not as great at intimacy as you thought you were.
It is impossible to see
yourself exactly the way other
people see you.
One of the best things about therapy is that it can help you understand how you come across to other people. You may be insightful, but you certainly cannot see yourself how other people see you.
We can look at the data and come to understand what causes you to get irritated so easily when your loved ones think differently than you do.
Hi, I’m Dr. Roth,
Like it or not, your perspective is only one perspective. You and the person sitting across from you do not have the same viewpoint because you are looking at your perspective from a different point of view. It is impossible to find someone who shares every opinion.
How you look at people and situations is informed by the family you grew up in and the trillions of experiences you have had that are uniquely your own.
It is basically impossible to have the same perspective as your partner (or boss, for that matter) because you did not grow up with identical experiences. This also has an impact parenting differences.
Trust me. I am an identical twin, and even though we grew up in the same family attached at the hip, we still don’t see the world identically. Yes, she had the same experiences as I did, but she responded to them differently.
“You will discover that your disdain for opinions different than your own has to do with the fact that you feel so different. You have always felt different – quirky, rebellious, indifferent, someone’s Plan B.
Now you are looking for sameness. Yet, you are keyed in on the differences between you and other people and not the similarities.
You are working for yourself and against yourself at the same time.
Different is GOOD. Trying to control or “tweak” the people in the world around you is PAINFUL! And impossible.
It takes one to know one!
Gritty therapy works by aligning your current version of yourself with your ideal self – the person you truly want to be. However, making these kinds of changes takes GRIT – courage and persistence in the face of obstacles. It requires deliberately doing things differently than you typically do. Lastly, in Gritty Therapy we will look at aspects of yourself that are not working for you and make radical shifts in your interpersonal style that will allow you to connect more, and feel “different less.
We can start a more productive conversation than the one going on in your head. You are the common denominator. The only person you need to change is you (because you simply cannot change other humans. People you love are waiting for you to arrive, not “someday” – NOW!
