“Unicorn,” is defined as“a creature of the imagination; a person that exists only in legends or myths or fiction.”
As a therapist, mediator and attorney, I see many unhappy individuals and couples longing for the “happily ever after” they had planned. The ones in the most pain are not sure if they want to stay or go.
To many of my clients, the possibility of experiencing a truly happy marriage seems as remote and impossible as sighting that “imaginary creature represented as a white horse with a long horn growing from its forehead.”
A happy marriage is not a mythical or magical experience. It’s the end result of many acts of two people who truly CARE about each other.
You can appreciate that despite your best efforts, from time-to-time you’re going to trigger each other. Or hurt each other. Or scare, sadden or disappoint the other.
The difference between reality and mythology is that the happy marriage doesn’t miraculously appear. In the real world, you can create a happy marriage by learning a few Compassionate Communication skills — including empathy and forgiveness — and applying them liberally and often to your relationship.
What I have learned over the years is that the difference between a happy and an unhappy marriage is that in the HAPPY one, each partner truly CARES.
Partners share:
C – Compassion for themselves and their partner. Compassion is not codependency. It’s a healthy perspective on your own needs as well as your partner’s. It’s knowing the 5 steps to receive what you truly want and need and practicing the miracle of empathy.
A – Acceptance of all the idiosyncrasies that make your partner unique. Acceptance is the ability to love someone for who they are, and not who you need them to be. It is also accepting the humanity and divinity of both of you, knowing we are spiritual beings having a human experience. And marriage can trigger all our human parts.
R – Respect for each other’s individuality. Respect is the ability to see the good traits of your partner and honor those. No one is perfect. As Sam Keen said, ” We come to love not by finding a perfect person but by learning to see an imperfect person perfectly.”
E – Empathy for your feelings, desires and needs. Empathy means you listen, understand, and truly care what your partner feels, and they learn to do the same for you. You drop the walls you've built to protect yourself and the filters through which you have judged each other and truly relate from your heart.
S – Self love that allows each of you to practice healthy self-care. True self-love is the ability to take exquisite care of yourself, no matter the circumstances. You give yourself the attention, affection, appreciation and acceptance you need. Then you share all that love with your partner.
If you're unclear where your relationship is breaking down in this CARES model, I can help.
Bottom line: Unicorns don’t exist, but happy marriages do. You can have one — if you try.
And if you do your best, and CARE as much as possible and it's still not meeting your needs, you can have a Compassionate Divorce®, which isn't a Unicorn either.
Linda Kroll is a therapist, mediator, attorney, Chopra Certified Master Teacher, and author of the bestselling Compassionate Mediation® for Relationships at a Crossroad: How to Add Passion to Your Marriage or Compassion to Your Divorce.
How do the stories you tell yourself about someone affect how you show up in your relationship?
“She always does this.”
“He never does that.”
What are the beliefs that keep you in conflict, even if the conflicts are within your own mind?
Check out what you're telling yourself about the expectations, the disappointments, the “shoulds,” the stories – and just make a note in your mind.
Think about how painful this relationship is to you.
Does it make you feel scared or sad or unloved or vulnerable?
What are the feelings that you're feeling and where do you feel them in your body, in your heart, in your chest and your throat, your back, so check out.
What would it be like for you if you didn't have to tell yourself those stories?
If you didn't have to feel the feelings of pain or sadness or disappointmentand you could truly relate from your heart.
Here are FOUR TIPS to help!.
The first tip is Connect to Your Best SELF.
What does that mean?
I'm an IFS (Internal Family Systems) therapist and Dick Schwartz, the founder of IFS always talks about SELF as having eight C qualities: C as in courageous, calm, connected, curious, confident, compassionate, clear, creative.
And I always add grateful.
When you're feeling all those calm, compassionate feelings, you're “in SELF.”
However, we're not usually “in SELF in all our relationships.
What happens is in our interactions, we get triggered.
When we get triggered, it triggers some deep wounds at times, and instead of acknowledging our pain or our fear, we try to manage it.
We go about our business or we try to ignore it, or we try to stay busy.
Even as we're trying to manage our lives, those exiled feelings come out, and we have out in ways that cause stress. Those behaviors cause stress for us, but they ten cause stress for other people.
Some people eat too much, drink too much, get addicted to things, get enraged, go have an affair.
There's all different ways to try to get extreme because you can't manage your feelings and you can't acknowledge the exiled feelings that you're not talking about.
When you're “in SELF.”, you recognize that you're a human being, but you're really a spiritual being who is having a human experience.
What does that mean?
It means that you're divine. It means that whatever spirit, soul, God, nature, higher self means to you – that is who you are
Learning how to be “in SELF” will improve all your relationships..
Here are some ways to connect to your best SELF.
You can meditate. You can journal, you can pray, go for a walk. You can take a bath. You can quiet your mind and listen for the messages from your soul.
There's lots of different ways to do that. Whatever brings you peace, brings you back to yourself will help with this first tip to connect to your best SELF.
The second tip is to Let Go of Your Limiting Beliefs.
First of all, you have to know that you have limiting beliefs – all those stories, all those expectations.
Someone wiser than me once said that “Expectations are premeditated resentments.”
Think about that for a moment.
Expectations are premeditated resentments.
If we don't expect, we can't resent the fact that our expectations aren't met.
You may have to leave certain relationships if you're not getting your needs met, but take a look and see how much you're laying your expectations onto someone else and hen being disappointed that they can't deliver it exactly as you wanted.Byron Katie does a lot of good work on her website www.theWork.com.
She has you look at your thoughts and ask yourself four questions.
Byron said that 85% of the problems in life come because we believe our own thoughts.
Think about that.
Just because you have a thought doesn't mean it's true.
Just because you have a story.doesn't mean it's the only way to look at the situation.
Write down a belief and Byron Katie says, ask yourself four questions
Is it true?
Is it a hundred percent true?
How do you feel when you think that thought?
How would you feel if you could let that thought go?
Take a breath, and you'll notice you might think it's true, but it's not a hundred percent true.
You probably noticed that if you could let that thought go, you'd feel much better than you do.
Then she asked you to try on a different thought, because when you have a different thought, you have a different feeling.
When you have a different feeling, you can often show up more “in SELF” because you're going to drop down from your head (and all that judgment) and go into your heart.
Connect to your best SELF, let go of limiting beliefs and then unburden the pain from the past.
The third tip is to Unburden Pain from the Past.
You may need some help with that.
You may need some therapy. You may need to talk to a trusted friend you may need group support. You may need to go to a 12-step program.
When we're carrying around pain from your childhood, pain from when you first got married, or pain from other relationships, and you bring that old pain into the present moment and project it into the future, that keeps you from being in SELF.
It also makes you more vulnerable to being hurt because that well of exiled feelings never gets unburdened.
Internal Family Systems is a great way to get to your higher SELF, let go of those limiting beliefs and judgments, and go back to where the pain was first caused and take better care of yourself.
I want to invite you to check out an IFS therapist in your area, or work with me if you'd like to and see how you can unburden the pain from your past.
Tip number one, connect to your best self
Tip number two, let go of your limiting beliefs,
Tip number three, unburden pain from the past.
The final tip is to Relate from Your Heart.
Take a deep breath with me and connect to your heart.
When you connect to your best self and you're no longer using your belief system to create walls around your heart or filters through which you judge someone else.
When you unburden the pain from the past, you really are a channel of love and a beacon of light.
From that place, all relationships heal.
You may decide you have to leave or you can begin to create boundaries, not cutoffs, and you can do it coming from your higher self.
For my friends that are getting divorced, I invite you to notice that divorce brings out all parts and you have to learn how to speak for the feelings underneath the fear and sadness, because that's what going on for both of you.
Thich Nhat Hanh, the great spiritual leader said that eople like to take sides.
And what we can do is therapist or mediators or coaches or clergy or parents or anyone helping to be of service – is to go to one side in a conflict and tell them about the pain and suffering of the other party.
And then go back to the first party and tell them about the pain and suffering of the other party.
Because once you can have compassion that we're all having the same feelings, we all have the same parts, healing can happen.
We all have the same challenges, and you can come from your higher self and speak with empathy, set your boundaries and be safe.
It's a free gift and it gives you a guided meditation to actually get to SELF, and to experience what it feels like to come from that calm, compassionate center.
It also gives you a four minute overview of Compassionate Communication.
It gives you a Relationship Assessment so you can start to assess how you are showing up in your relationships and it gives you a roadmap to my Compassionate Mediation® process.
I'm so glad you joined me and I have a lot more to share.
Begin to do Guided Meditation…As you do that, you can let go of your limiting beliefs.
You can unburden yourself from pain from the past and the stories you've been telling yourself over and over again, and you don't have to suffer with pain from the past.
You truly can unburden it. You get to see what a burden it is. And as you unburdened it, you can relate from your heart, heart to heart, with someone else.
As you're relating from your heart miracles happen, they really do.
When you change the dynamics, you change the energy between you and that person with whom you’re having a conflict.
Just take one more breath and imagine yourself showing up in the relationship and you don't even have to interact with that person.
You can show up right now and just change your energy. Just stop judging. See if you can stop telling yourself the same stories.
If you can find the inner child in you that needs appreciation, affection, attention, and acceptance and give it to yourself.
Stop looking for it from the other person, give it to yourself and then see what shows up.
As you listen to the Guided Meditation to get to self, you're going to understand that your parts can keep you stuck.
They can keep you telling yourself the same story and dropping into the same foxhole and getting some post-traumatic symptoms from whatever was triggering you in the first place.
Get the guided meditation, learn how to be in self.
As you do that, you'll let go of your limiting beliefs. You'll unburden pain from the past. You'll relate from your heart. That's what I wish for you.
I wish for you the opportunity to become your best self and have all that you desire and deserve.
You can let go or all that you don’t want and take exquisite care of yourself. Also, let’s stay connected in my Compassionate Communication Community on Facebook: Join us HERE: www.CompassionateCommunication.GROUP
If you're a therapist, coach, mediator, attorney, counselor or clergy, who works with individuals or couples in conflict, I'd like to take a few moments and talk with you about Compassionate Mediation®.
It's more than marriage counseling.
It's more than divorce counseling.
It's a hybrid of both that allows your clients to talk about every issue that they may have to consider if either partner has thought about leaving.
You can provide a process that brings more awareness, compassion, mindfulness, and SELF-energy into those conversations.
I offer you my process of Compassionate Mediation®.
My name is Linda Kroll, and I wrote the book Compassionate Mediation: How to Add Passion to your Marriage or Compassion to your Divorce.
For many years, I have been working with individuals and couples in conflict doing individual counseling, couples counseling, and divorce mediation.
I put together my degrees in counseling, mediation and law, combined with my Chopra-certification as a teacher of meditation, yoga, and Ayurveda, to combine emotional and spiritual healing along with financial and legal information and support.
I want to share this process with you,
I have a Roadmap , LindaKroll.com/Roadmap which provides you with an outline of my process and an introduction as to how to integrate it into yours
The reason I want to share it is that I went through my own long and painful divorce, and it was a typical adversarial one.
I don't want that for you or for your clients or for the world.
I've spent the last 35 years merging IFS – Internal Family Systems therapy – with mediation and law and higher consciousness – and created this process that I want to give to you.
When I say give it to you, that's what I want to do.
I want to certify you – if you'd like to be certified – and give you my templates, my outlines, my scripts, my meditations, my contracts so that you can take this process and use it in your practice now, and then take it with you wherever you want to go in the world with it so that you can add more expertise, more impact, and more income to your life using this process.
If you're a professional – therapist, coach, mediator, attorney or clergy – or if you know one who could use this information –please share it because I'm ready to go.
If you've already got the Roadmap, we'll talk about it and see if this is a fit for you. I'd love to get to know you and see how Compassionate Mediation can enhance your practice now – either in-person or online.
I just need to tell you about someone who recently reached out to me for help.
She called me because her husband wants a divorce and she doesn't. He's taking her to mediation and he's filed and she's all distraught. If you knew how to use Compassionate Mediation, you could help them both navigate this time.
Sometimes talking about an ending – with what it would mean to give up children's custody some of the time and part with your money and divide the household – and at the same time, help them learn how to compassionately communicate,
They can relate from their best SELF, let go of limiting beliefs, unburden pain from the past, and relater from their hearts.
When they do that, they can share empathy with each other in ways that they never have before.
Please join me in the Compassionate Mediation process, the introduction, the certification.
Let me give you the benefit of all my years of experience, both personally and professionally.
Now that the quarantine is over, many individuals and couples are re-evaluating their marriages.
Many may be wondering, “Should I Stay or Go,” and YOU can be the expert they turn to for ongoing support – which often lasts months, and sometimes years.
I am passionate about helping individuals and couples to compassionately communicate and resolve conflict from their highest and best SELF.
I want to teach other IFS therapists the skills I developed from blending IFS therapy, mediation, law, higher consciousness and mindfulness to use this process of Compassionate Mediation® for your personal and professional growth.
I am inviting you, as part of my hand-picked small group of therapists, to join me in my Compassionate Mediation® Certification program which is starting soon.
Instead of losing clients to other professionals at the thought of a separation or divorce, you can expand your toolkit with my turn-key process that gives you the questions to ask, information to share, and guidance to offer your clients.
Compassionate Mediation® blends emotional and spiritual healing along with legal and financial information and support.
It helps people consider what an ending could look like so they can choose to re-commit to creating a new and better marriage, or a peaceful and respectful separation or divorce.
As you become known as an expert in conflict resolution, you will get more referrals from others, increase your client base and keep your current clients for months – and sometimes years – as they process all the feelings and make all the decisions – necessary to restructure their relationships.
If you are interested in learning more, please schedule a time to chat so that I can answer your questions and see how this process can integrate into your practice now.
Together, we can change the face of divorce, one heart at a time.
I wrote Compassionate Mediation for Relationships at a Crossroads: How to Add Passion to Your Marriage or Compassion to Your Divorce. Dick Schwartz said it is “Relationship healing at its best.” You can access some book excerpts HERE!
P.S. In this ground-breaking process, I will offer hands-on guidance and mentoring with all aspects of your therapy practice.
From cutting-edge tools and techniques to dynamic interviewing tips, from meditations and scripts and templates, along with marketing skills, and from supervision for your most challenging clients to safe and supportive sessions designed to support your own personal development, this program will be a comprehensive haven to nourish you as you nourish others.
I want to offer you 10 Minutes to a Better Relationship with Compassionate Communication.
Let's go start. Take a breath, take a breath, and think about a relationship you'd like to improve.
Who would you like to improve your relationship?
Someone that you're married to, someone that you're in a relationship, someone that you work with a child or parent,?
Think about a relationship for just a minute and then see, what are the stories you're telling yourself?
Tell me the stories that you keep repeating. He always does this. She never does that. They're always going to be that way. Just notice that you're telling yourself a lot of stories about yourself and the other person, and then take a look at how you're acting in the relationship right now.
How are you showing up? Are you showing up as your best self and ask yourself how willing are you to change your reactions?
What we're going to talk about is How Compassionate Communication can Help you in just a Few Moments and What is Compassionate Communication
It's the ability to connect to your highest SELF, let go of your limiting beliefs in judgements, unburdened pain from the past and relate from your heart.
What I find is that many people don't want to get out of the foxholes that they put themselves in.
For instance, you might think that the way you're being right now remind you of a time in the past, when you were younger, your family of origin, or even in this relationship right now,where there was a problem…
… you felt scared
… you felt hurt
… you felt sad
… you felt unloved
… you felt betrayed
Unfortunately we stay down in that foxhole, meaning we have some post-traumatic symptoms that we bring into the present moment.
When someone is doing something to hurt us, we're not able to state what we're feeling, but instead we go back to feeling what we did when we were under stress or under fire.
I want you to take a deep breath because I want to talk about how to get to self, how to be your best self and what you dowhen you're in your best self is you have these qualities.
Meditation is one way to get to self.
Unburdening the pain from your past is another way to get to self. When you're in self you're calm, clear, compassionate, curious, connective, creative, confident, courageous, and I've added grateful.
As an Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapist, they talk about self in parts and in ifs, the self that we're talking about helps you heal.
That's what it's going to do for you to get to self. When you're in self, you can be more calm, clear, and compassionate and bring those qualities back to your relationship.
Now. imagine if you showed up in your current relationship with more calm, clarity, confidence, compassion, take a deep breath.
Just think about it.
What if you could be more compassionate and I know you may have spent a lifetime being compassionate and offering understanding, and you're feeling misunderstood.
Start with being compassionate to yourself, start understanding that yes, you're feeling vulnerable or you're feeling hurt.
You can also send compassion to the other person who may have been doing the best he or she knew how to do up until this time
What you can do is begin to change your story. Instead of seeing yourself as a victim, see yourself as a hero where you're now able to talk about the parts of you that are sad or hurt or scared or even angry in a way that is more self-lead. You're doing it with more compassion, with more confidence, with more courage, but you're also doing it in a way that's calm and clear.
You're not judging the other person.
You're not critiquing the other person.
You're learning how to speak for your feelings in a way that brings change.
When you start showing up in your highest SELF, the relationship changes.
If one of you is having an argument or you're having an argument, and one of you takes a breath and decides to just bring in some curiosity as to what's happening right now as to how you can change it.
Moving forward, curiosity is an element of self because you're not judging.
You're not blaming.
You're not looking through the filters, that which you judge your partner and you don't have those walls around your heart that keep you from getting more connected.
See if you can bring more self into your relationship. Sam Keen says, “It's not about finding a perfect person to love. It's learning how to perfectly love another imperfect person.”
Believe that no matter what your relationship looks like now, even if one of you is willing to change your reaction, to become more self led, to be more compassionate, to be more curious, to be more authentically sharing your feelings with courage and not judgment.
That's going to change your relationships because as you let go of your limiting beliefs, as you let go of your judgment of your partner, of your child, of your parents, of your coworker and of yourself.
We judge ourselves for not being strong enough or not making a decision earlier.
If you can let go of your limiting beliefs, you can actually break the chains that are binding you to another person in a negative, energetic situation.
What does that mean?
Everything is energy. When you're showing up with an attitude or a wall or a filter, you affect how you are showing up in your relationships.
The other person sees the wall, sees the judgment and isn't available to connect heart to heart.
If you can unburden the pain from the past, at the same time, you let go of your limiting beliefs…
… you'll find that when you're not carrying the baggage of all the things that happened to you in your past
… you may need to get some counseling for this. Whatever you need to do – clear up your pain from the past.
… let go of the limiting beliefs that are causing you to stay constricted and judgmental and begin to relate from your heart.
When you relate from your heart, you can talk about anything because you're going to talk in a way that's self led – calm, clear and compassionate.
As you relate from your heart, you're going to see new possibilities open up in your relationship.
What you're going to do is begin to get to your best self. And that's what I want to help you do.
‘ve created a guided meditation to get to self, and it's part of my Compassionate Communication Care Kit.
If you go to www.LindaKroll.com/ccc, you're going to get a care kit that has a Seven Minute Guided Meditation to give you a felt sense of what being in self is about, where you connect to the earth, where you have compassion for yourself, where you separate from the parts of you that are judging or reactive.
You really go to your highest incarnation of the Divine Nature that you are.
From there, you can relate to the other people in your life.
Then there's a short video talking about how Compassionate Communication helps.
There's also a Relationship Assessment where you can start to observe your current relationship and see where you can make changes now.
There's also a Compassionate Mediation roadmap.
Just to reflect on what we've talked about, you can take 10 minutes right now.
You can think about a relationship you'd like to improve.
You can understand that the story you're telling yourself may not be true. It's just a story you can think about – how you're being in this relationship now and how willing you are to change.
If you're willing to change, you can meditate, journal, go for walks, get some counseling, take good care of yourself so that you have more self-energy to communicate with yourself, with the person with whom you're having conflict.
As you be your best self, let go of your limiting beliefs, unburden the pain from the past and relate from your heart.
You're going to see a whole new possibility open up between you and this other person.
Again, you can listen to the guided meditation to get to self and do it in a way that brings peace and harmony to your heart, to your relationships, to your families, to your community and to the world.
Go, get your Compassionate Communication Care Kit, stay out of the fox holes.
If you need help doing that, let me know, connect with me. I'll show you how.
Remember when you compassionately communicate, you're going to heal all the relationships in your life, starting with the .one you have with yourself.
Thanks for listening. We did it in 10 minutes and I look forward to staying connected.
