Becoming Relational

I’m Nancy Dreyfus and in the spirit of what I’m here to teach, I want to acknowledge that for a good part of my life, I hadn’t a clue myself as to how to come up with any of those things you see here as the streaming messages* John Gottman was referring to. Most people don’t.

Those messages are more than "sharing feelings.” Without fanfare, they signal something about our underlying connectedness. They suggest the awareness that there are two realities at play. Even “You’re being a bully” has a warmth to it, because the speaker is relating to the alleged offender, not complaining about them. When you are in a relational space, it doesn’t matter so much whether I’m holding you accountable or I’m calling myself out, who screwed up or who proved nicer. It’s the truth-telling that’s nourishing.

I'm here to help both The Unpartnered and The Partnered recover a profound awareness whose absence has kept this level of connecting hard to create. It has little to do with finding the right words. It has a lot to do with discovering that when your own insides and outer expression aren’t in alignment, that disconnection will be mirrored in your relationship life. For most of us, “relating” has meant either attempting to get through to someone or keeping someone from wanting too much of us. Though these agendas have their place, I’m inviting you to lose interest in them for a while, and play around with this one: I’m liking you because I’m liking the me that shows up when I’m around you. I call this Becoming Relational because we’re finally at the place you’ve been seeking but hadn’t quite named: I’m relating to myself in your presence.

I grew up in a family where there was non-stop emoting but very little real contact. I entered adulthood with blackbelts in making nice and becoming relentless. I’d look at couples and actually wonder: How do they even know what to say to each other? So, like many of you, I spent years in therapy, learning to be more vulnerable and more spacious. excavating my authentic voice and bringing that voice to situations previously considered fraught. I became a world-class listener, a world-class sharer and a recognized communication expert. Yet, something was still not feeling right between me and the world.

I discovered that one can be expressive, stand up for oneself, be incredibly kind and a genuinely insightful communicator…and still be holding onto enormous shame about one’s deep yearning to be tenderly related to. This is the place where I believe I can help facilitate a breakthrough for you.