Rise above the clouds to heal your relationship
Women who face health issues such as vulvodynia and interstitial cystitis find themselves struggling to live normally while harboring what is often a secret problem. At first, not many of us desire to disclose these health issues, because that would mean talking about something very personal few people have heard of or understand. We may not even choose to talk to our girlfriends about this embarrassing and frustrating problem. As a result, these disorders can feel very isolating. Often, the only person who knows about the issue is a spouse. Relationship difficulties are common as couples face a host of concerns, stresses, and fears around these diagnoses. As a Martha Beck-trained life coach and recovered vulvodynia and IC sufferer myself, I want to address these relationship struggles in a series of columns and provide tips, tools, and help for everyone involved.
Some women worry they’ll never find a man who will understand and be okay with vulvodynia, while others worry their current relationship will end. There a million other worries sandwiched between these two ends of the spectrum, and none of them feel good. For any woman with pelvic pain, worry and anxiety are troublemakers. They create a fight-or-flight response in the body, which increases the heart rate, muscle tension, and the production of certain hormones. None of these side effects help the healing process, and in fact, they primarily prevent the healing process. So learning to release worry and anxiety is of paramount importance for anyone dealing with pelvic pain disorders.
Of course, releasing worry is much easier said than done. As a life coach, I spend most of my time working with clients on negative emotions such as worry, anxiety, fear, doubt, sadness, depression, hopelessness, and panic. The first step to figuring out what to do with these emotions sounds very simple: you must notice you are feeling a negative emotion. It is not nearly as easy as you might think. For example, how many of us have lashed out angrily at a spouse only to realize later he was innocent of all accusations? PMS, anyone?
It is difficult to feel okay in a relationship with another person when you are not okay in your relationship with yourself. Recognizing the emotions you are feeling as you work through ill health and taking responsibility for them is the key to maintaining and creating good relationships. Your spouses or significant other cannot know what you are feeling or thinking. He cannot fix your emotional, physical, or mental state. That is your job, and in fact, your priority.
For example, if your deepest fear is your husband will leave you, you will feel intense worry and anxiety every time you think about this fear. Not realizing you are in this emotional state, you might find yourself snapping at him, feeling irritated with him, crying effusively in his presence, withholding yourself from him, nagging him, and wishing he would just understand, help out more, or change in whatever way you desire. As a result of this, you might spend most of your time with him acting very unpleasantly, creating a feeling of distance between the two of you. He might pull away instinctively to protect his own emotional state, which only feeds your original fear that he will leave. Though this may be the furthest thing from his mind, it is the only thing on yours. By not recognizing your own emotional state and discovering the real issue underneath it, you actually end up moving toward the very thing you fear – the loss of your husband.
If you can identify your feeling and recognize your own anxiety or fear, you are on your way to changing how you react. Knowing you are feeling this way, even if you don’t know why, will help you step back from it and not get caught up in it. You will recognize the irritation inside you when your spouse comes home and says hello. You will see that he simply said hello, and that your irritation comes from your own emotional state. Were you feeling happy, his hello would be perfectly fine and not irritating at all.
This is the first step toward creating harmony within a relationship even during difficult situations. Take responsibility for your own emotions, recognize them, and notice them. Become aware of the multitude of emotions you are feeling right now on a day-to-day basis, and take some time to sit quietly and jot them down. Let yourself sit with these emotions as you write, and describe them to yourself in your notebook. What do they feel like inside you? Do you notice them settling somewhere within your body? Often, this exercise is enough to dispel and release negative emotion, leaving you with enough clarity to see your spouse for who he is. Without your emotion clouding your vision, your relationship will feel much simpler and more straightforward. From this place, you can have calm, clean discussions and connect with each other on a deeper level.