Revive Your Relationship by Calming Your Stressed-Out Brain

Are you running short on patience with your partner? Do you see them as the enemy? Are they driving you crazy?

Is it them? Is it you? Or is it stress?

As discussed in a previous post, chronic or unmanageable stress can make your reactive core brain more easily triggered into a fight, flight, or freeze mode, which doesn’t bode well for a happy relationship. When you’re chronically stressed out and easily triggered, you have less access to your creative thinking brain and your core brain becomes too dominant. This dominance neurobiologically blocks your ability to foster a loving connection with your partner. In particular, stressed-out brains have tendencies that can strain your relationship, such as

• perceiving harmless nonverbal cues as attacks, and
• feeling personally offended by your partner’s behavior.

Fortunately, it is possible to overcome these neurobiological barriers and regain your ability to connect with your partner.

How? By cultivating a calm brain.

Compared to a stressed-out brain, a calm brain isn’t so easily threatened or offended by interactions with your partner. A calm brain is better able to engage its higher, reflective, objective regions. Those higher, thinking parts of your brain can far more accurately assess the nuances of a situation, empathize with your partner, consider your partner’s true intentions, and respond with care. A calm brain is neurobiologically equipped to nurture and enjoy your relationship.

To get started, here are three habits you can practice to calm your stressed-out brain:

1. Practice self-compassion. Self-compassion means feeling warmth and caring for yourself. It means being gentle with yourself when you fall short, and instead of being critical, seeing yourself as a work in progress, doing the best you can, and worthy of forgiveness, love, and good fortune. If you practice having compassion for yourself, you lower your self-induced stress and boost your ability to have compassion for your partner. Mutual compassion can help you connect, plus you’ll find it way easier to kindly interpret each other’s actions and take whatever happens less personally.
2. Practice self-care. Your brain requires optimal care for optimal functioning. Feed it whole nutritious foods throughout the day to keep blood sugars level, and reduce your consumption of brain-altering substances, including caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, and sugar. Move your body and get outside to reap the soothing benefits of being surrounded by nature. And set aside plenty of time for sleep, especially when you are stressed or need to recover from a grueling day. Sleeping, spending time moving outside, and careful eating are not wasting your time, because with a well-nurtured brain, you’ll be far more creative, calm, efficient, and therefore, more productive and easier to be with.
3. Practice mindfulness. Mindfulness practices calm your brain and boost your resilience, so you can better tolerate stress and maintain emotional balance. Mindfulness practices include meditation, focusing on the present moment, paying attention to your breath, having gratitude, and doing random acts of kindness.

These three brain-calming practices are easier said than done. In fact, your stressed-out brain might be stressing out at the idea of trying to cultivate new habits. So let’s break it down.

First, start with practicing self-compassion. Why? Because being kind and gentle with yourself builds a strong foundation that boosts your ability to practice self-care and mindfulness. When you feel worthy of care and calm, you’re naturally motivated to seek it. There’s no struggle to get going.

In contrast, if you’re dark and down on yourself, there’s little energy for seeking care and calm. You may even feel darker and more down about your inability or unwillingness to get going.

The next post looks at self-compassion more closely so you can get going.