Stepping into Your True Power in your Relationship – 4 sessions

Why is it that droves of smart, competent, savvy, successful women right across the world, are still waking up to find that they have lost or diminished themselves in their relationship yet again?

It is easy to blame the man: he’s not right for me, he’s changed, he’s emotional withdrawn, he’s immature, the particular circumstances. There may indeed be truth in all of these, but when it happens with a number of different men, and for many, many women, it becomes clear that we might need to take a look inside to understand what’s going on.

If you are one of these women, take heart, you are not alone.

Having counselled many thousands of women in their relationships and individually over the last 12 years as a Psychologist, one of the most striking patterns I have discovered is:

How little we, as women, truly love and honor ourselves, and it particularly shows up in our relationships.

Many of us neither know of, nor believe in, your own true power.

Even with a generation of women’s liberation, there are many secret places where we still do not feel and act on our true and authentic power.

Disempowerment – a fundamental source of women’s struggles

Over more than a decade of working with women, I have come to believe that this is the fundamental source of all our other struggles, whether they be relationship difficulties, body image problems, exhaustion from trying to do too much, general depression and malaise, resignation with our life, or not following our passion, to name just a few.

Latest research on Depression shows that there are 5 times as many women as men suffering from this disempowering illness.

And when we give our power away, what do we do about it?

More often than not we complain and joke amongst ourselves, casting ourselves more as victims than designers of our own lives.

While it’s great to joke and have fun with our friends, often there is also a resignation and a blaming of the guys, who are after all, are just being guys.

Are you one of the many women who, although successful in many ways in their lives, have not found your full female power yet, and particularly in your closest relationships?

Women are the world’s greatest untapped resource.

Women are capable of far more than we have ever been encouraged to be and do. While we have come a long way in the last 50 years, we have nowhere near reached our full feminine potential yet.

And as women, I believe, we have within our biology, the code for enhancing all life.

Christiane Northrup, author of Women’s Bodies, Women’s Wisdom, says,

“Every time a woman is in her power, she upgrades everything and everyone around her.

This is not a zero sum model. When a woman is doing better, is happier and healthier, she raises up those around her, she heals the earth”.

See below for more on why it is so easy for women to lose themselves in their relationship.

Is this program for you?

If you feel you have subtly or not-so-subtly lost your power in your relationship, then this program, delivered individually, is for you.

Over the 4 sessions over 4 weeks, we look at how and why you lose yourself in your relationship, and give you easy to use tools to find your way back into your true authentic power, so that you not only benefit you, but also your relationship as a whole and your family.

There are 2 steps in this process.

Step 1 is discovering just what you have given up for love.

Once you have discovered these ways, the next step is using the 7 key strategies to tap into your Inner Authentic Power:

  1. First stop what’s not been working
  2. Start with you by designing your whole life anew from the inside out.
  3. Your Wake-up Call – your Anger and Resentment
  4. The Basic strategy – Saying No and meaning it.
  5. The Intermediate strategy – Assertiveness with power and ease.
  6. The Advanced strategy – Finding the hero in him
  7. Discovering the goddess within, and showing your man the difference between love making and sex.

In-House (Gold Coast), by Phone or Skype – 50mins

Cost: $170 per session for 4 sessions, depending on your need.

Phone 1300 830 552 to enquire or make an appointment.

Private Health Insurance Rebates apply, and Medicare Rebates may apply (please check for details)

Make a Booking

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Why it’s easy to lose your power if you are a woman

How your Female brain works for and against you.  

Without giving you an anatomy lesson, let me just say that your female brain comprises a hard wiring, (which is different to a man’s in many ways), and is also marinated in female hormones.

What does this mean for you?

Well, the female brain is built for connection and social harmony, and that is what drives a female to do from birth.

Without you being conscious of it at all, maintaining the social approval of others, and the relationship at all costs is the goal, if you are “wired” and “marinated” as a girl.

And , what’s more, the psychological stress of conflict registers far more deeply in female brains than in men’s.

We are built to build social bonds based on communication and compromise, and to preserve harmonious relationships.

This all happens because our communication and emotional memory centres are larger, and as well, we have the marinating hormones of oestrogen and oxytocin, making us even more sensitive to these things.

The oestrogen in our system makes us focus intensely on communication and emotions, and oxytocin, which is released when we are feeling intimate, either with our partner or even with our babies and children, leads to strong desires to nurture, help, serve, attachment and bonding.

In addition, Oxytocin also triggers our trust circuits, by shutting down our Amygdala and our critical and skeptical mind.

With all this going on, is it any wonder that we, as women, have an outstanding verbal ability, a great ability to connect deeply in friendship and develop empathy, an almost psychic capacity to read faces and tone of voice for emotions and states of minds, are very responsive to distress in others, and have a wonderful ability to defuse conflict.

As if that is not enough, we also have a larger corpus callosum, which is the part that connects both sides of the brain, and because of this, we have richer and more automatic connections between our words, feeling and our body.

This gives us multimodal and spiral thinking, which also means that we tend to understand innately the consequences of our actions, not just on ourselves but on all those around us.

So putting these all together, we are built to highly value Communication, Connection, Emotional sensitivity and Consideration for others.

What about men?

Did you know that for the first 8 weeks in utero, a man starts off being female?

Then, at around the 8th week mark, the flow of testosterone begins its own marination process, and the communications centres of the fetus’ brain start to get killed off, and more cells are grown in the sexual and aggression centres, making men  built to be potent and affect the world.

All this results in men valuing their personal strength, power, protection, providing, and sexual prowess.

 So, we are “wired” and “hormoned” to value different things even from before birth.

When we first meet

When we first meet, things don’t look so different.

In the first blush of a romance, the man has a new challenge, to secure this new woman and possibly relationship, which makes him feel powerful. Most men are willing to do the things that they know women like, like dating and romantic things, talking lots, spending lots of time together in order to get to know each other, and to secure the relationship they want.

Most women, for our part, with all this attention, romance and emotional intimacy happening, are usually happy and appreciative, and open to being sexual.

This has you both winning, and getting your needs met, while at the same time, showing your “most attractive selves”. He is your hero, and you are his goddess. No wonder we Psychologists call this the stage of Luminescence.

But, have you noticed that things change over time, once the relationship is secure.

Once things settle down

This is when we both go back to being more of our natural selves:

He becomes not as emotionally open, not as attentive to you,  romance being not so important and more focus on sex in isolation, and more focus on himself and what he wants.

You become less interested in sex if it’s just going to be without the quality time together and the emotional engagement.

The differences in our wiring and hormonal marinating have begun to emerge, no matter how wonderful the initial relationship was to begin with.

So now you have your MAN:

  1. Naturally being ego-centric (and can’t imagine why a person wouldn’t be).
  2. Being non-emotional, and therefore not so good at empathizing.
  3. Withdrawing or aggressive, or generally non-co-operative, when he is stressed.
  4. Feeling most comfortable in a provider role.
  5. Have a stronger isolated sexual focus.

 And here YOU are

  1. Unhappy at the limited extent your man now communicates, connects, and is emotionally sensitive and available.
  2. Putting the relationship needs above what you may want for yourself individually.
  3. Tending to NOT be assertive in the pursuit of what you want, as soon as it creates disharmony or conflict with him.
  4. Particularly susceptible to this during your mommy years.
  5. Preferring a more whole lovemaking to straight sex in isolation.

In a nutshell, women tend to put relationship needs first; their needs second. Men tend to put their own needs first; their relationship needs second.

 Or put another way, women over-function in their togetherness and emotional closeness, and under-function in their independent, individual Self.

Men, on the other hand, over-function on their Individual Self, and under-function in their togetherness and emotional closeness.

But, to have a happy life with a fabulous relationship, we need BOTH in equal measures.

It’s what I call it “the Sweet spot” –  Highest you + Best relationship

What does this mean for you as a woman?

It means deciding not to lose yourself or give yourself up for the sake of the relationship any more. It doesn’t work, and now we know why.

It means balancing yourself out more, by respecting and being more true to yourself, your needs and your wants; putting them first far more often than you currently do, and finding and living from your authentic and vibrant self.

It doesn’t mean loving your partner LESS;  It’s about loving yourself MORE.

It’s not about making your partner wrong;  It’s about honoring what’s right for you.

It’s not about blaming and complaining;  It’s about taking charge of your own life.

It’s not about controlling your partner.  It’s about empowering yourself.

How do we create the ultimate intimate relationship adventure with a hero of a husband, a happy flowering woman, great fun and companionship, and a wonderful vibrant love life?

You have it in your hands.

The first step is to discover how and where you have unknowingly handed it away.

 

“It’s women who create life. Women who inspire.

Women who can bring out the hero in every ordinary man.

Women who understand the language of ecstacy.

Ah, what a privilege it is to be a woman”

Regina Thomashauer