#YNF EP11 - How Bettering Your Mental Health Changes Your Relationships

In this episode, Brittany explains three ways in which bettering your mental health changes the dynamic of your friendships and relationships. 

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:12

[inaudible]

Speaker 2: 0:12

Hey everyone. Welcome back to the You're Not Finished podcast. My name is Britany Franklin, and I'm the host of this podcast and I know it's been a while... And I know that the last time I did an episode, which was the spiritual abuse episode, I said, I was going to talk about signs of a spiritually abusive organization, as well as talk about some tips on healing from a spiritually abusive experience. However, because I've been super busy with school and just not able to give my full attention to making sure that that is a good quality episode. I'm going to go ahead and push that back to next time. I also want to react to a couple of videos and do a little bit more research on that to make sure that you get all the resources you need for that. So for now, especially since it's been too long since last episode, I want to quickly talk about three ways bettering your mental health changes your relationships. So the first way is you start to see the foundation of your relationships. And what I mean by that is in my life. Most of my friendships and relationships have started off with common interests, which is usually the normal way that relationships get started. But over time, I have realized that the thing that has held some of them together is common traumas, which is an extremely shaky and dangerous foundation to continue building our relationship on. It could be comforting to connect with someone who has experienced and understands some of the trauma abuse or injustices that you've been through. But at the same time, relationships solely founded on these common traumas can give room for manipulative, coercive, and emotionally immature behaviors, which can lead to fulfilling very valid or healthy needs and desires or getting those desires and needs met in very unhealthy ways. When you begin to better yourself or your mental health through your connection to God, therapy and self care, you'll begin to see these foundational roots and more than likely, these types of relationships will begin to make you feel stuck, uncomfortable, or even unsafe. And eventually you might come to the realization that this relationship has to change. This means that the relationship that is built on shared trauma now has to hopefully become one in which the healing is shared. Now, as I've said, in a previous episode, that doesn't necessarily mean cutting the relationship off. It could mean having a conversation with someone seeing where that goes, and then depending on the outcome of the conversation changing or ending the relationship accordingly. So the second way that bettering your mental health changes in relationships is you start to see patterns and cycles in your relationships. And this is kind of related to the first way, but as you better yourself and address issues that contribute to your mental health, you'll notice unhealthy cycles and patterns that seem to have moved your relationship forward, but have actually caused it to remain stagnant. Like you've been marching in place for however long the relationship has gone on. And just as I should've mentioned in the first thing, it's not just noticing issues with the other person, but within yourself too, it's asking yourself, how have I contributed to, or enable the growth of this unhealthy foundation or continuing of these unhealthy cycles. And as you get healthier, deciding that that is something you no longer want to do, cyclical patterns in relationships or friendships remain either because there's an inability to change it, maybe due to something that's beyond someone's control, maybe for example, like an addiction or some form of oppression, or there's just a blatant refusal to change in one or more parties, you'll begin to see when you're being manipulated into staying connected with someone sub-posts and sub-tweets or any toxic or emotionally immature behaviors that aren't beneficial to even the person or people who might be acting out in that way. You'll see how you might've acted in this way and begin to change your own behaviors for the betterment of yourself and your relationships. Just as I said, in the first example, that doesn't mean cutting someone off, unless there is a refusal to acknowledge the negative effects of the cycles. But change can start by simply saying something like, Hey, I love you. And I'm learning how to love myself better every day, but because I love us, I can no longer enable, endorse, or tolerate these patterns in our relationships. I do have to say that I've seen and heard of instances where people try to have this conversation in order to control the dynamic of their relationship to their benefit. And I want to be clear that that's not what I'm suggesting to do here, but rather having this conversation for the purpose of establishing healthy boundaries in a relationship for the betterment of yourself and the other person involved people, aren't in our lives to be controlled. And we only need to control ourselves to begin with self control. The third way that bettering your mental health changes your relationships, is that your role in or view of the relationship changes. Now, what that means is you start to see relationship or friendships, less as something that should be beneficial for you or what you can get out of their relationship, although it should be healthy and safe enough to where it is beneficial for you and safe for you. But you start to see it as more of how you can honor your friend or a loved one through their love languages in a healthy way. Additionally, you don't initiate or continue a connection with someone for the sole purpose of serving yourself. And you don't pursue relationships with people that will potentially enable bad beliefs or behaviors you don't enable bad beliefs and behaviors yourself. even if it may benefit you. You honor the connection with either the assurance that your friend or loved one will do the same if the relationship is healthy or with the acceptance or the expectation that your friend or loved one is just in a place where they cannot reciprocate the love they receive. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that it's okay for people to not reciprocate the love that they receive, but it's just more... It's just more so accepting it for what it is and responding to it accordingly. I can say with certainty that your friendships and relationships with others and yourself will change for the better as you better your mental health, especially if the other party or parties involved are doing the same. It's such an amazing feeling to be able to grow with someone as opposed to growing ahead or away from them. But that does happen a lot. And a lot of times that can be for the best as well. So hopefully that was helpful to you. I hope it resonated. I know this is a really short episode today, um, but that was the goal of 15 minutes or less with this podcast. Um, but I just wanted to give you guys something, some encouragement and resources that I felt could be helpful in the meantime, while you wait for that next spiritual abuse episode. But if you need additional resources for mental health addiction and suicide, head over to www dot you're not finished.com and click the get help section. Also, please make sure to follow me on Twitter at YNFinished and on Instagram at YNFCast to stay up to date on the latest episodes and for encouraging content and I will see you again next time. Thanks so much for listening, have a great day, And finish well. Bye.