When Stress Impacts Relationships
written by Fran Westwood
Photo by Brooke Balentine on Unsplash
Stress can impact relationships at any point. When it does, it often heightens both partners’ needs and instinctive coping mechanisms. Unprecedented situations and painful circumstances can bring people in an intimate relationship closer together, but, as is often the case, they can also elicit underlying issues and fray connection to others. Challenges are a part of life, and inevitably any couple will at some point encounter major changes and unanticipated stressors. Even anticipated changes and losses will hit hard and can challenge the strongest couples. Moreover, even positive changes can be stressful, such as long-desired career changes, having children or moving to a new home.
Many clients who walk through our door are either individuals or couples who are experiencing the way the many intense pressures of life are impacting them and their closest relationships. Many couples we work with are navigating the inevitable stresses (alongside the joys and vulnerabilities) of becoming parents. Others are caring for their own aging parents, or are navigating financial stressors or midlife career changes.
What causes some relationships under stress to survive and even thrive, and others to struggle?
Nobody wishes for stress in their life, but learning to regulate and communicate are practices that can support empowerment and resilience in your mental health journey. Instead of trying to connect with your partner despite life’s challenges, learning what helps you stay grounded when in stress and how to communicate what you need to your partner can create an opportunity for you to both feel more connected because of life’s trials.
John and Julie Gottman, relationship researchers for many decades, highlight the importance of self-awareness around one’s own emotional state, especially noticing when one is flooded emotionally. Heightened emotions during stressful periods are unavoidable.
The idea of being ‘flooded’ emotionally is a term often used by psychotherapists and psychologists to describe how the areas of the brain that are responsible for executive functioning move offline when we are under stress, and how in these situations, the areas of the brain that are responsible for keeping us safe in dangerous times are online. In other words, when you are overwhelmed by stress, the emotion you are experiencing becomes no longer a passenger in your brain, but starts to take the driver’s seat.
In this context, staying grounded does not mean always being ‘calm’, but rather allowing yourself to stay with the emotion without letting it overtake you.
Emotions during stressful periods are inevitable. What we do with those emotions is a choice, however. We can choose to notice our unconscious patterns and grow to more adaptive ways of responding. Whether on your own or with the support of a therapist or supportive person in your life, this kind of growth not only supports you but also is a way to build scaffolding around your most important relationships.
