Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby

Power Struggles In Relationships growingself.com/power-struggle…

Signs Your Relationship Is Failing …happinessandsuccesspodcast.libsyn.com/is-your-relati…

Toxic relationships are addictive. Just like heroin or alcohol. Toxic relationships have a pattern of high highs and low lows, and that pattern does a number on our brains, making them really hard to walk away from.

When someone you love and care about is in a toxic relationship, it’s so hard to understand the hold that it has over them.

It can genuinely feel like you don’t have the power to let go of your toxic relationship, even though you’re having a terrible time in it.

You might be fully aware that this person is not good for you, and still crave being around them like you’ve never craved anything else in your life.

Have you ever had a relationship that was fundamentally bad for you, that you couldn’t seem to end? If so, you may have been addicted to a toxic relationship.

Having better, fulfilling relationships with others is about strengthening that relationship with the self. But how exactly can you do that? Yoga retreats? Bubble baths? Solo hikes up Mt. Kilimanjaro? Find out the answer on this week's Love, Happiness & Success podcast episode.

If you're always asking yourself "Will I ever find love?," this looming question you allow to follow you around like a dark cloud is what’s stripping the vibrance out of your life. - John Kim, special guest on this wee's Love, Happiness & Success podcast

You can get into all kinds of trouble when you start building relationships with others if that foundation of self-love and self-acceptance is not in place.

If you don’t have a great relationship with yourself first, healthy relationships are pretty hard to come by.

Many of my clients who are not in a relationship or even those who are considering ending a relationship have 1) amazing and wonderful lives in many ways, and 2) also feel an enormous amount of anxiety about their relationship status.

The recipe for emotional maturity: Self awareness Self esteem / stable self worth Courageous communication Respect for needs rights and feelings of self and others Personal responsibility Tolerance and appreciation of differences For more info, join me on the podcast this week!

Emotional maturity allows us to love others fully, feel good about ourselves, and take full responsibility for our lives.

So much of the work of counseling — helping people become more emotionally healthy, have better relationships, and create the lives they want — is really about helping them grow into the next stage of emotional maturity.

Of course we wouldn’t expect a toddler to be emotionally mature. But the reality is, not all adults are either. Just because you’ve reached a certain age does not mean you’ve reached full emotional maturity yet.

If you can imagine the wisest, most self-possessed person you know, and then imagine a toddler throwing a tantrum on the floor of a supermarket because her mom won’t buy her Twizzlers, these are the two extremes of emotional maturity.

What happens when there’s a mismatch between what we’re communicating overtly, and the true emotion or intention behind our message? Trust breaks down and relationships are damaged.

Being a better communicator is about more than practicing “I” statements or asking open-ended questions. It’s also about building your self-awareness about how you’re coming across to others, so you can make sure that your message and your intended message are in alignment.

Most of the messages that we broadcast to the people around us are not intentional. We communicate through our word choices, our tone of voice, our body language, our facial expressions, and countless other means that don’t feel like a conscious choice.