LWL06. Building Healthy Relationships
CHECK-IN section – Maximum time 20 minutes.
Mindfulness: Take a break from what you have been doing, breathe deeply, relax and recharge.
Step 1: Find a comfortable seated position with both feet grounded on the floor. Put a hand on your stomach. Close your eyes.
Step 2: Take a deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth. Notice your thoughts and feelings and any tensions in your body.
Step 3: As you inhale and exhale, breathe deeply so your belly fills and empties with air. The hand on your stomach helps you practice belly – not chest breathing.
Step 4: For the next two minutes make breathing in and out your only focus. Let your thoughts come and go without trying to control them. If you find an area of tension in your body, relax it and let the tension go.
Step 5: At the end of the two minutes slowly open your eyes. Gently bring your presence back to your surroundings.
Gratitude: Taking time every day to be grateful can help our health, relationships, emotions and happiness. What is something you are grateful for this week? (Everyone in group shares.)
Review “How Are We Doing?” worksheet. (Led by loved one with behavioral health disorder.)
· Past week’s recovery activities.
· Goals for next week.
Discuss: How did you benefit from working on last week’s commitments? (Everyone in group shares.)
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SKILL FOR A LIFE WORTH LIVING section – Maximum time 20 minutes
Think: Relationships and how happy you are in them has a powerful influence on your health.
We are social beings, not meant to live our lives alone. Some psychologists have claimed that loneliness is the greatest problem of our time, contributing to most of our social ills. Having people in your life who you respect, enjoy spending time, and care about what is going on in each other’s lives is healthy. Social media gives us a daily reminder of just how many ‘friends’ we have and just how much they care about us. Some of us may try to collect as many as possible on social networking sites like Facebook. In doing so we might be creating a quantity of unfulfilling relationships, which won't make our life happier at all. Taking time to create quality relationships matters. We will get more joy in life as we develop close relationships with a few people we trust rather than having many superficial relationships.
Discuss: Share how a meaningful relationship started in your life.
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The quality of our relationships matters much more than the quantity. We can feel we have one close friend or family member and be just as happy as someone who feels they have more. The size of our inner circles depends on a lot of factors — including your personality (extroverts tend to maintain more intimate relationships), your gender (women tend to maintain more), and your age. Developing new relationships can sometimes be difficult and uncomfortable. The following are ways to help us make better connections with people:
Become genuinely interested in others. The only way to make quality, lasting friendships is to be genuinely interested in them and their interests. It is a lot easier to make friends when we show interest in them rather than try to make them interested in us. Learn what other people love or enjoy. We don't have to have the same interests, we just have to care about what they are interested in.
Smile. Happiness does not depend on what is happening around us but how we see our circumstances. Smiles are free and have a great way of making others feel better.
Remember people's names. A person's name is to them the most important sound in any language. Learning someone's name, even how you say it, can help people feel valued and important.
Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. The easiest way to have people want to talk to you is to become a good listener. To be a good listener, we must care about what people have to say. Many times, people just want someone who will listen to them.
Make others feel important – and do it sincerely. The golden rule is to treat other people how we would like to be treated. We love to feel important and so does everyone else. We can do our best to help people feel important in a sincere way.
BUILD HEALTHY RELATIONSHIPS ACTIVITY
Step 1: Create a list of things that may be keeping you from building healthy relationships.
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Step 2: Write down some distractions or choices that have affected your relationships.
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Step 3: Write the name of someone you would like to feel closer to.
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Step 4: What will you do to build a healthy relationship with that person?
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COMMIT & CELEBRATE section
This week I work on:
· Building a healthy relationship with someone I would like to feel closer to.
· Reinforce and celebrate recovery by sharing a pleasant recreational activity with members of my family/CSOs group. (See “Celebrate Recovery Handout” for ideas.)
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Benefits from keeping commitments:
· Close relationships, more than money or fame, are what keep people happy throughout their lives. Healthy relationships protect us from life’s discontents, help to delay mental and physical decline, and are better predictors of long and happy lives than social class, IQ, or even genes.
· Sharing pleasant recreational activities helps keep us close and can become a buffer for negative interactions that can be part of any relationship.
Watch: Lyric video. (Video that reinforces this week’s topic.)