By Dr. Andrew Smith, Clinical Psychologist, Professor, and Pat Tillman Scholar. To learn the skills to improve your relationships, download our free guide and checkout the REWIRE app
When I think about how to improve relationships and social connection problems in my life, my community, the world…the barriers feel daunting. The first problem in the change equation is me. I’m stubborn and reluctant to change, focused on me, and loathe to slow down enough to do the work. The second problem is that relationships involve other people, and they are as resistant to change as I. Third, the environments I’m trying to enact change in can feel like a real dumpster fire of polarization and disconnection. There is so much wrong with the ways that people are experiencing and considering each other right now. `
Although our social lives are complex, my research and work as a therapist over the years are grounded in a universal reality: Unless people commit to action or behavior change, they stagnate or relapse into old patterns. And unless that committed action is grounded in a narrative of redemption (rather than hopelessness or contamination), it is difficult to persist in the ways that bring about change (for more on the Power of Narratives, goto https://rewirerx.com/2024/05/02/what-stories-do-you-tell-the-power-narratives/).
We are a culture obsessed with self, and as a byproduct, obsessed with the idea that our thoughts and emotions are the truth. Cognitive exercises intended to have you think more about thinking, focused on changing the way that you think and feel directly…can help for a time. However, motivation and persistence are rooted in social meaning and purpose,1,2 and efforts to change the ways we think and feel wither on the vine without social action and feedback from other people. It is not that thoughts and emotions are unimportant; but to stimulate change in the ways we feel and think about our relationships, action and behavior change are the key driver.3
Said another way: Unless you are out there testing with experience (instead of staying stuck in your predictions about others and how you will feel), then things don’t get better or don’t improve sustainably.
In order to change, we can learn to be mindful of our patterns of thoughts and emotions, use that mindfulness to identify an opportunity for change, and initiate a single action that is practical, values-led, and grounded in a specific goal. Emotions and thoughts are useful, as a signal or indicator, but not as a place to live or stop.
The need for an active (vs. passive) approach is especially necessary in the context of social relationship change. Thinking more about improving relationships or waiting for other people to miraculously heal and improve enough for you to feel safe or rewarded…waiting for the other person to apologize first…this way will keep you stuck repeating the same patterns. If you don’t believe me, think about how you somehow find yourself in a loop repeating the same role and the same argument in your relationship with a spouse, child, parent, friend, etc.
That pattern might look like this: she gets mad…he withdrawals…she accuses him of disengagement…he accuses her of anger…they argue about how they are arguing…they avoid talking about the deeper thing that needs discussion…they withdrawal into separate corners …repeat).
So, lets shift the lens. Instead of thinking more about thinking even in this essay, let’s try a simple exercise. The exercise starts with grounding your motivation to enact change in a goal for something beautiful or redemptive in your relationships.
Imagine:
If you could have relationships the way that you ideally envisioned them, what would they be like? Not the barriers, or the ways that they feel unchangeable. But rather, the vision of beauty or hope that you held in the first place.
- Parent. What is your vision of your relationship with your daughter or son? What is the vision for the family? Perhaps think about what that looks like right now, as well as 5 or 10 years down the road.
- College student struggling to find and keep authentic connections. What might it look like to develop a single deep friendship or a core set of friends? What would it look like to be surrounded by people with shared interests?
- Person transitioning from college to the real world. What does it look like to be part-of and to participate-in a community that is made of people of all ages and demographics (not just same aged peers)? Where do you find connection points and communities from which you can build your sense of belonging?
- Son or daughter of a parent. Perhaps you long for a deeper and more authentic connection with your parent. What does that look like for you, ideally? Perhaps your parent is alive and you still have opportunities to communicate and heal and experience real honesty with one another. Perhaps your parent has passed away, and within that liminal space, there are things that you shared together or interests that your parent had that you can reconnect to.
- Husband or wife. Perhaps you long for a relationship that really sings. What would that look like? What was the reason you married in the first place? What vision of beauty did you carry and hope for what that relationship would be?
- Siblings. Perhaps you are grown up, and time and distance have gotten away from you. What would it look like to reconnect to your shared history? There is no one else in the world who is with you from birth the way a sibling is.
- Friends. Perhaps it’s been years since you last communicated, or your communication happens by superficial means these days. What would it look like to reinvest in one of those relationships? What could they bring to your life, and what could you bring to theirs?
- Veteran, First Responder, Nurse, Doctor. Why did you choose to the path of service?
What was the vision for meaning and service that drove you down that path?
But relationships are not simple, and they can carry history, baggage, rigidity, volatility, resistance to change, numbness, indifference…In relationships how do we hold that beautiful and redemptive goal and not be discouraged by the limits of our thoughts and emotions? As the saying goes, the way to eat an elephant is…one bite at a time.
Steps for bite-sized committed actions.
- Accept the relationship as it is. Choose a person or persons with whom you desire improved relationships. Start within your tribe of important people. Accept the playing field as it is in each of your important relationships as ground zero- the place upon which to build. The reality of suffering and imperfection is an honest foundation for being able to accurately plan and gauge change. With the knowledge that “it takes two to tango,” it’s quite important for you to accept the ways that you have personally been responsible for a portion of that suffering and imperfection, because that is the only aspect that you can personally change.
- Plan an action. Commit an action towards the person. Choose a personal value to guide that action (e.g., compassion, curiosity, loyalty, gentleness, authenticity) rather than being guided by a goal to “feel” something. Your action should be doable and practical. Avoid grand gestures.
- Carry out the action. Notice two things when you do this. (1) Did your behavior align with your values? (2) Did your committed action get derailed by emotions and thoughts? Did your emotions and thoughts help you or hurt you, relative only to the goal to carry out that action towards that person?
- Orient your goal correctly. Make your goal this: to align with your own values. How was this action aligned with your values? Your overarching goal may be to improve the relationship, but that happens one values-led behavior at a time. Improving the relationship is a certainly desirable downstream byproduct, but relationships and patterns take time to change.
Using this committed action exercise allows you to grow consistency and reliability to improve your own actions, which is the only part of the relationship equation that you control. When you ground an action in your values, you move closer to congruence with yourself, even if the outcome is disappointing or painful in the short term. We get derailed from goals when we organize our choices around “pain avoidance,” which is what you’ve been doing and is keeping you stuck.
Examples to provide context.
Example 1. Dave is a 48 year-old father to three adult children in their mid 20s. In his early 20s, Dave tells his story of feeling consumed with his struggles to provide financially, a lot of anxiety turned into irritability and anger, and slow disengagement from his family as work took over. Eventually, Dave and his wife divorced, and despite having shared custody, Dave’s involvement eroded over time, relegated to paying for things and sporadically showing up at events. Each time that he sees his kids now, he is consumed with regret and the pile up of losses. And his kids are deeply wounded too.
Of course, this is not what Dave set out to do when he got married and started a family. Without change, Dave expresses that he will continue to carry this mortal wound.
Today, at age 48, Dave takes the risk to articulate a redemptive goal: to reconnect to his role as a father and bringing about as much healing in those relationships as he can control. He is committed to doing so despite the fear of rejection and pain of loss that he feels. We discuss how it is critical that he hold his goal for his role as a father as a higher priority than his default mode of avoiding fear and pain that is sure to occur as he attempts to change. We walk through the exercise to commit actions:
- Accept the relationship as it is. Dave’s children have moved on, or they say they have, which is also for them a form of self-protection and avoidance. Based on his own values and goals, Dave admits that he has largely failed in his role as a father and hurt his children deeply. Nonetheless, Dave is ready to step up to healing now, and to play that role within what is possible.
- Plan an action. Dave’s goals are grounded in his role as a father. He plans an action grounded in his values of commitment, persistence, and compassion. Specifically, he plans an action to invite his son for a beer via text message. He determines to provide many options of availability to make it easier for his son to say yes.
- Carry out the action. Dave invites his son through a text message. It’s a full day before his son responds. His son’s response is, “I’m so busy with a project at work right now and the baby. I can’t.” Not surprising that Dave’s son is not going to prioritize this attempt.
- Dave notices that he is thinking and feeling rejected, and wants to withdrawal from his commitment. Pain is driving a desire for self-protection and avoidance. His gut tells him to say “I shouldn’t have even asked.” Dave feels to pull to avoid and withdrawal.
- Orient your goals correctly. But, Dave’s goal to reconnect to his role as a father, above and beyond the pull to protect himself by avoiding. Dave asks if it’s okay to drop off a coffee to chat for a few minutes on one of his son’s work breaks. His son says yes. They meet, and Dave sees a picture of his grandson for the first time.
It’s not perfect, but it’s a “bite,” and Dave finds that his internal distress dissipates because he is acting in a way that is aligned with his chosen values (commitment) towards his goal to improve his role as a father. Is he still wracked with grief and loss? Yes. But, in this example, Dave can say to himself “even though there are pain points, I chose my values over the pull towards self-protection, and stepped up and lived out my values to the extent that it was possible.”
Example 2. Anna is a 37 year old artist, wife, mother of two. Her marriage of 12 years is deeply important to her, and is not in a good place. Between her work, her husband’s work, and the logistics of hauling their kids around, the marriage is a logistical partnership without much in the way of spontaneity, joy, or shared pleasure in the small things. And lately, they’ve been arguing and sleeping in different rooms (her in the bedroom, him on the couch).
On further discovery, we identify a pattern. Anna’s anxiety about their marriage (feelings) and concerns about what is happening (thoughts) are driving her to initiate arguments as a frantic means of connection. However, her attempts to engage are undermined by her escalation towards blowing up in anger. Her husband is also concerned about their marriage (thoughts) and feeling afraid of how she responds. He withdrawals and ends conversations quickly as soon as Anna escalates.
This is not couples therapy, as Anna is the only one sitting across from me in the room. So we can only do something about how Anna chooses to engage in this pattern, with a goal to improve her role as a wife and friend to her husband, and ultimately to hopefully improve her marriage.
- Accept the relationship as it is. The relationship is in trouble. And Anna is a part of the trouble equation. She discovers the way she is being driven by anxiety-turned-to-anger, and that this is doing harm to her goals for herself and her marriage. We redefine the anxiety and anger simply as emotional signals to make a new choice.
- Plan an action. Anna commits to noticing and taking responsibility for her anxiety and anger when it comes out in conflict, whenever that should arise.
- Carry out the action. Conflict arises the very next day. Anna catches herself escalating, and her husband begins to withdrawal. The pattern is happening, as usual. She responds by saying, “I’m angry right now, and I know that it’s hurtful. I’m sorry. And we still need to talk about this. Will you, please?”
- When she tries the new behavior (responsibility taking), Anna notices anxiety (feeling) that her husband will reject her and he will justify continued withdrawal (thought). She feels pulled to abandon this approach, to move back towards her avoidance pattern, which is to get angry and send her husband away and not deal with the deeper conversation.
- Orient your goals correctly. Anna is still angry and anxious. But remember, she is realigning her goal around her role as a wife, her marriage, and her values. The goal is not aligned around avoiding pain.
Regardless of her husband’s response, her internal distress after the conflict dissipates. Responsibility taking for her anger is not a manipulation tool. It’s an honest attempt at seeing her anger as problematic for herself and her goals.
She doesn’t need to suppress feeling sad about where the marriage is at, but she can honestly look in the mirror and say “I did what I could do in this conflict just now,” and in this way align with herself.
In both of these examples, a minor change or tweak in the pattern may eventually have impact. Perhaps Dave’s son never comes around, but relationships that matter are magnetic. A coffee turned into the sharing of a picture of his grandson! Maybe that turns into a beer in a month, and eventually being invited over for dinner and a play date with his grandson. For Anna, responsibility taking may evolve into more trust from her husband, a shared vulnerability about where the marriage has become disconnected, and a shared commitment to new behaviors to find joy and reconnect. These bite-sized actions can begin to pick up steam, to build inertia.
My committed actions for the week.
In healthy-ish relationships (not clinical examples), the skills I’m describing are also useful for further deepening and reinforcement. In that vein, here are my committed actions for the week, each grounded in my goals to live up to my roles as father, brother, son, colleague, etc. Each is each guided by a value including joy, honestly, persistence, curiosity, joy, and compassion.
- My wife. Invite her to get up 30 minutes early on Thursday morning to have coffee and talk at the kitchen table before the kids wake up.
- My son. Plan a meal together (he’s 6, so, probably tacos) and invite him to make dinner together on Tuesday night of next week, when I know that we will both have the time.
- My brother. Schedule a zoom call to catch up on life, offering a few different times for Thursday and Friday.
- My mom. I was short with her about a trip that we are planning– violated my own values and in my goal to live up to my role as a son. To return to congruence with my values, I plan to circle back and apologize, take responsibility for my reaction, and see how she’s doing around that.
- A co-worker. I’ve been feeling isolated and lonely at work. So I’m going to invite a co-worker that I’ve been seeing in meetings for a walk during a 30 minute break.
In my fears and predictions, what if my wife doesn’t get out of bed, my son throws a fit, my brother is too busy, my mom is still not ready to have that conversation, and my co-worker doesn’t respond? Those would all be reasons not to act– thoughts and emotions that keep me stuck. But I can take bites and align with myself by living out my values towards the roles and goals that matter most to me. Someday, these actions might be met with reciprocation, and each relationship aligns more closely with redemption.
How about you? What are your goals, values, and committed actions towards the people who matter in your life?
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1 Ford, M. E., & Smith, P. R. (2007). Thriving with social purpose: An integrative approach to the development of optimal human functioning. Educational Psychologist, 42(3), 153-171.
2 Scott, M. J., & Cohen, A. B. (2020). Surviving and thriving: fundamental social motives provide purpose in life. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 46(6), 944-960.
3 Smith, A. J., Pincus, D., & Ricca, B. P. (2023). Targeting social connection in the context of Trauma: Functional outcomes and mechanisms of change. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 28, 300-309.