Why Don't I Feel I Matter

Article

If you have been asking yourself, Why don't I feel like I matter in my relationship?, there may not be one simple explanation. There may be needs that have gone unrecognized, protective patterns that have gradually replaced connection, old meanings that are being awakened by present experiences, or behaviors within the relationship that genuinely need to change. Rather than deciding that the feeling is wrong or immediately deciding that the relationship is wrong, begin by becoming curious about what the feeling is telling you.

We argue about chores, money, sex, children, work, schedules, relatives, phones, forgotten promises, or who said what during the last disagreement. The subject on the surface may change from week to week, while the emotional question underneath remains remarkably similar. Am I important to you?

Why Don't I Feel I Matter

Worksheet

The worksheet offers tools such as the S.T.A.Y. acronym as we slow the conversation rather than demanding an immediate solution. Sometimes changing a relationship requires learning to sit through a little discomfort. I can feel unheard without immediately attacking. I can feel criticized without immediately defending myself. I can feel afraid without demanding instant reassurance, and I can feel overwhelmed without disappearing from the relationship. We are not suppressing our feelings; we are learning that experiencing a feeling does not require us to automatically repeat the reaction that has always followed it.

I give events meaning, and then we react to that meaning. Those steps often happen so quickly that they feel like a single experience. Change the meanings you've attached to past experiences, and you change your perspectives about your life and every relationship of those important to you. If you feel you don't matter in your relationship, change.

Why Don't I Feel I Matter

Podcast

Few experiences in a relationship are more painful than beginning to wonder whether you truly matter to the person you love. Usually, this feeling does not appear because of one terrible event. It develops slowly but begin to carry more meaning when they happen repeatedly.

UNcover the experiences that leave you feeling unimportant.

UNderstand the needs, meanings, and protective reactions underneath those experiences.

UNlearn the familiar responses that continue producing distance, and

Become more intentional about creating experiences in which both people can feel heard, considered, valued, and important.

Go Deeper

To go deeper and learn about the underlying pattern, needs and recovery, look at this chapter from Dr. Slate's book: Your Relationships Can Change, the Relationship Self-Help Workbook.

Building Confidence In My Worth - Podcast

There are two kinds of confidence: emotional confidence and authentic confidence (often called steady confidence). Emotional confidence is feelings based and steady confidence is evidence based. This podcast is about developing steady confidence. Evidences can be collected from the good decisions we make in a day, the responsibilities we've upheld, memories of who I am, have been and want to be. The podcast goes into the concept of forgotten evidences and remembered mistakes - which often brand us and our futures may validate to us.

Podcast states that most people are not lacking ability they are lacking evidences. The podcast exposes those moments of courage, kindness, perseverance, and victories through our mental filters. Through expanded roles and evidences we rebuild value.

Updating Our Relationship - Podcast

This podcast defines the two networks that we all live in - the network within ourselves and the network of relationships we have in family, friends, and the work place. We can come to the understanding that the network within has to be rebuilt to restructure our thoughts and behaviors to our outside relationships.

From our defensiveness, shutdowns, and needs come our thoughts and actions. This is presented in terms of mental health disorders, to worries, to our work performance, our fears and the continual pursuit of our needs.

Becoming UNpsyched, is a means to grow beyond our past, to get outside our comfort zones, and survival skills. Being UNpsyched frees us from our stuck relationship patterns, perspectives of the life around us, and builds healthy relationship dynamics. Is it time for changes in your relationship? Tune in to tune up your life.

Rewriting My Story Podcast

Your story contains the mornings you got up when you wanted to remain in bed, the people you loved imperfectly but sincerely, the bills you paid, the meals you prepared, the fears you faced, the apologies you made, the boundaries you finally learned to set, the people you encouraged, the temptations you resisted, the responsibilities you carried, the losses you survived, and the countless ordinary decisions through which you quietly kept building a life. And your story contains something else. Pages that have not been written yet. You cannot decide everything that will happen on those pages. Life will continue to surprise you. People will disappoint you. There may be losses you cannot prevent and circumstances you never would have chosen.