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  1. Research shows that couples with a secure bond experience arguments that are shorter, lower in intensity, and easier to recover from. Building and keeping a secure bond with your partner requires mindfulness and consistency: respond to what’s needed or supportive in a given moment; give them your full attention and affection in a spacious greeting; conveying care, consideration, and that they matter and are seen.

  2. Interventions For Anger

    Interventions For Anger

    Elia Lowe-Chardé

    Practice Exercises · 3 - 5 minutes · 1/8/2023

    Anger is a sign that you're resisting what's happening because you perceive an overwhelming threat, not trusting yourself to handle what's happening directly. Vulnerable feelings under anger are usually fear, hurt, or grief. Experiencing and expressing these feelings and connecting them to your needs, gives you access to more skill, insight, compassion, and wisdom. Read on for 3 questions to ask yourself when angry.

  3. Part of making your relationship a priority while maintaining autonomy means you consider the impact your actions may have on your relationship and look to negotiate ways all needs can be honored. To do this while not losing yourself, practice writing down your needs and guessing their needs beforehand. Make an upfront request to create a shared understanding about what’s most important, before discussing strategies or decisions.

  4. Find Space Between Needs And Strategies

    Find Space Between Needs And Strategies

    Elia Lowe-Chardé

    Practice Exercises · 4 - 6 minutes · 1/26/2023

    Confidence, flexibility, creativity and equanimity may become more possible when you would like someone to meet a particular need, can trust that you can meet that need with someone else, and can accept a “no” to your requests. You can allow grief or disappointment to arise, and naturally turn towards a relationship in which those needs can be met. In some cases this may lead to the dissolution of a partnership or friendship.

  5. Healing And Repair After A Triggering Comment

    Healing And Repair After A Triggering Comment

    Elia Lowe-Chardé

    Practice Exercises · 6 - 9 minutes · 2/4/2023

    How to get past the sting of a painful comment? Get empathy from self or another. Then connect with the commenter's feelings and needs. The more you can do this the less personally you may take it. Then work together on specific, do-able, authentic agreement about doing something differently next time, the kind that will enable you both to shift out of reactivity. Three things need to be in place for that to work.

  6. The Why And How Of Accessing Grief

    The Why And How Of Accessing Grief

    Elia Lowe-Chardé

    Practice Exercises · 5 - 8 minutes · 2/13/2023

    Grief is often confused with anguish. Anguish is a painful feeling that comes along with deep resistance to an experience or truth. Grief that leads to healing is an expansive state. It is a willingness to be with an experience and truth. If you're not resisting grief, then it's a neutral-to-pleasant experience. Pleasant sensations can include a sense of space and relief as something is integrated and tense holding releases.

  7. Create Choiceful Listening

    Create Choiceful Listening

    Elia Lowe-Chardé

    Practice Exercises · 2 - 3 minutes · 2/28/2023

    Often, honoring someone’s choice supports more connection. Thus, checking in with someone’s choice to listen or not (offering autonomy) sets the stage for being heard more fully. On the other hand, when someone has the perception that you are talking to them without considering their choice, resentful listening might result. Here are ways to mindfully check in about choiceful listening before starting a conversation.

  8. Helping With Difficult Emotions

    Helping With Difficult Emotions

    Elia Lowe-Chardé

    Practice Exercises · 3 - 5 minutes · 3/9/2023

    If you want to support someone in distress offer a menu of ways you can contribute. Often a person in distress can’t articulate what they need but can recognize it when they hear it. Move fluidly among these 11 options to offer what’s truly helpful, rather than offering something out habit or based on what you think they should have. Remember that you can ask, “Is this helpful?” to support collaboration.

  9. Boundaries For Healthy Differentiation

    Boundaries For Healthy Differentiation

    Elia Lowe-Chardé

    Practice Exercises · 6 - 9 minutes · 03/06/2024

    Differentiation means you can access both autonomy and intimacy in relationships. When you're unafraid to lose yourself or be controlled, you can feel deeply connected and affected, while standing strong in yourself. Differentiation also means ability to tolerate disharmony and differences, self-soothe, offer compassion, and set boundaries. Here, we'll focus on setting boundaries with monitoring eye contact and physical interaction, and interrupt our "helping".

  10. Talking About The Past And Effective Relationship Repair

    Talking About The Past And Effective Relationship Repair

    Elia Lowe-Chardé

    Practice Exercises · 5 - 8 minutes · 02/07/2023

    Relationship repair means building connection and care after disconnect and unmet needs. It requires intention to connect and take responsibility for your behavior by naming what didn’t work, offering empathy, and making a plan to do something differently next time. When you have enough empathy to find care and curiosity for them, reflect the other person's observation, thoughts, feelings, needs and requests. Focus on this more than on details of the event.

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