Relationships & Personal Development

By Kirin Parmar, MCP, MSc, B.Arch, Certified Life Coach | Enneagram Consultant
Website: kirinparmar.com

Growth does not occur in a vacuum. We must have enough conflict for self-awareness to expand. We must have some suffering to grow our hearts in empathy and compassion. In humans, it is the intended natural order of things. Yet we seem to be masters at mishandling this opportunity.

My top-notch divorce lawyer said what I would always recall: “We never really know the other person, and we never really know ourselves.”  Eventually, a counselor would quip, “nevertheless, there’s a lot we can do to find out more!”

I had a mutual and amicable divorce. Of course there had been groused up reasons for the divorce, but mostly we just thought we needed to be with the right matches. But then people opened up to me in ways that did not happen before. Couples said something was amiss or frustrating, even though they cared and stayed together.  Anecdotally, only maybe five percent of marriages were thought to be thriving. Those insights gave me a big hesitation. I set aside looking. For three years, it was a rather good thing. I grew stronger as I grew ever more self-reliant. Until I yearned for more connection – a separate drive than responding to fear. Hurts might make us pretend otherwise, but humans are social animals and we need connection to thrive. I decided it was better to have hope.

I tried to be honest to myself about who I was and what would match me as opposed to what I would like to have, to compensate for what I was not. Plus I had determined to continue to expand my own capabilities. Eventually, I was to learn to also give myself permission to hire help. Almost immediately, my partner of now 11 years fell into the picture in an unplanned way. It was heady for both of us, though I announced the passion part only lasts two years and then there’s trouble. He insisted the love would not end. We were both to be right. There were growing pains, even a particularly big one. We don’t get that heady passion again unless we keep changing partners every couple years (!) But if we do proactive and enlightened work, we instead get something more profound, secure, and ever-deepening.

When we first fall in love, we don’t fall in love with reality, we fall in love with an illusion we create in our minds. We see a few data points and connect them based on all we have to enable this: Assumptions, dreams, past experiences. There is the euphoria of such wonderful attention and belief in each other, that we unconsciously link back to the feeling of wholeness and grand love we experienced when little – a heady mixture.

This was before we would take in the misguided and misperceived messages of our environment, that we were somehow not quite good enough. After which we descended into fears and limited defense patterns – specific to our personalities – to protect ourselves as best we could. These patterns did their intended work in carrying us through childhood.

Adulthood is another story. It’s now a complex world to be navigated among folk who don’t offer us the unconditional love, oversights or tolerances of our parents. Because we perceived that we had to be so afraid of our flaws, we became more reactive and defensive. We put more energy into listening to our fears and masking our flaws, at the cost of blossoming into our full beauty. We also tried to end our suffering by confessing to the ‘sins’ of others and putting in much frustrating effort to get them to change. At the same time, our tender egos made it so very hard to see or own our challenges. Lacking tools in conflict management, we descended into anger and grief. Mystifyingly, we have felt misunderstood. At times it was as if we were communicating in the Tower of Babel.

Our primary love relationship is the hottest cauldron for invoking conflict – and the greatest opportunity for growth. Proximity eventually uncovers everything about us that still needs to grow in order to thrive. Even if our closest relationships are with friends, parents, children or co-workers, we have unfinished business thrown up.

A huge shift into healing can be gained with acquiring the skills for constructive communication. Engaging in conflict need not be too scary when we know how to do it constructively. Tools can turn something we might view as ‘thundering clouds’ into a handshake or amazingly, the ‘sun’. Unplugging where we are stuck brings wonderful relief and flow. We only lack such skills because they were rarely role-modeled from one generation to the next, even by those who love us most.

Since we usually are in relationships with other personalities who do not share the same idea of “common” sense, it also speeds up the process enormously, to use the Enneagram to learn about the different world views with whom we are communicating.

A coach’s role includes helping to change the misperceptions of what it means to be good enough so that we have the internal resources to accept self-awareness and embrace and enjoy the bumpy but potentially exhilarating adventure of living into our purpose in life. The ride of growth from when we started out as naturally, creatively, courageously and joyously wild with innocence, to regaining that wild, albeit with wisdom and compassion. (adapted from The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz) This growth in personal development and supportive relationships will free energies towards leaving a legacy of your most positive contribution.