Do you know all too well what it feels like to be in-between a rock and a hard place with your relationship: You don’t want what you have, but you don’t really want to go?

Do you find that your once fun and loving relationship is now filled with conflict, criticism, and uncertainty, but you aren’t quite sure when or how it happened? Instead of feeling love and appreciation, do you feel angry, annoyed, hurt, or frustrated? Do you feel scared that things might end or stay the same forever, but you aren’t quite sure which is worse?

Are you stuck in obsessively trying to find all the ways to fix your relationship (and/or your partner and/or yourself)? Do you notice more of what your partner is/isn’t doing that seems to have a negative impact on you? Does it seem like you try repeatedly to talk about what’s “wrong” to no avail? Do you find yourself thinking or saying things like “this relationship just isn’t healthy” or “this relationship is toxic”?

At some point, maybe you decided to seek help – either individually or as a couple or both – but nothing seemed to change. You opened up to friends and family about the state of things in your relationship and your concern that if your partner doesn’t “get it together,” you’ll have to end it. Your friends and family may have agreed with you and even begun to take your “side.” You all decide someone has to be causing all this conflict and there’s no way it could be you – you’re doing too much to try and help the situation!

After this period of heightened disconnection, arguments, and lots of complaining to your friends and family, maybe you experience those out-of-nowhere good days with your partner that throw you for a loop. All of a sudden, you’re back in those loving feelings, remembering all the reasons you married him or her in the first place. It seems almost unfathomable to you now that you were even considering a divorce. You wonder why you told your family about all those problems? The love is still there, things are going to be just fine.

Then something happens and big feelings are had and not too long after those loving feelings came back in, the anger and frustration are back. It was another big fight about the same old thing. He/she just isn’t willing to do the work to be in the relationship, you think to yourself. It’s the same old shit. This is never going to work, I’m the only one who’s trying. It’s time to make a decision.

Then you imagine having the “it’s-really-over” conversation and your heart breaks. You remember all the good times again. Surely this must just be just a phase, you think. He/she is going to come around and fight for us. This is going to work out – it’s just a rough patch.

And then the next day, the same old thing – disconnection, anger, maybe even a looming sense of hatred is beginning to brew just beneath the surface. It’s not just a phase. This isn’t working. I am miserable.

At some point, you realize it’s been many months – maybe even years – of this back-and-forth cycle of wondering if you should stay or leave. You’re not really sure what happened or how so much time has passed. You often think to yourself: This isn’t how life is supposed to be. This isn’t what I signed up for. I deserve better than this.

And yet, you still aren’t sure what it is you really want.

So what’s really happening here? What’s one explanation for why things can look one way one minute and so vastly different the next?

The way I see it, the issue here is not in the details of what’s happening – what he or she did or did not do or the nitty gritty of what’s “wrong” with the relationship – it’s about how our external reality is a reflection of our emotional state.

When we’re in Reactive Brain and experiencing a negative emotion (“negative” because they drain our energy, not because they are “bad”), we are in a threat response. In this experience, our mind looks outside of us to determine who or what is the threat, which is an incredibly important job for the whole survival thing – it’s just not so great in relationships. Because in an instant, once those negative feelings trigger the mind to label our partner as the threat, we are no longer working together as a team to restore connection. Instead, we’re unconsciously operating as enemies, viewing the other person as the reason we feel so “bad,” thus reinforcing the need to disconnect.

Then there’s Creative Brain – the part of us that experiences all the “positive” emotions (positive because they generate energy, not because they are “good”). Creative Brain is where we feel connected to ourselves and others, where we feel love and appreciation, connection, wonder, peace, possibility. Creative Brain is where we feel safe and we view others as our allies. Creative Brain is our true essence, our soul, the part of us that knows everything is always working out in our highest good.

We all have a Creative Brain and a Reactive Brain. In fact, all mammals do. These energetic states of consciousness encompass the full range of all of our emotions, which evolutionarily speaking, all serve a purpose. So we need them. All of them. The point here isn’t to say any experience or state is wrong or bad, it’s that when we aren’t aware of what’s happening in our inner world – when we aren’t aware of what state we are in – things can get a little dicey, especially in relationships.

Why? Because our thoughts reflect our state. So anytime I’m feeling a negative emotion – let’s say anger for example – and I’m not moving this energy through my body, my mind will be spinning a story reflective of that emotion to explain why I’m angry. If I feel angry (or sad, or scared, or ashamed, etc), my thoughts will be filled with this emotional content, and if I’m reactive, my thoughts will focus on who is to blame for the discomfort I feel.

Why does this matter? Because this is why one day we can be in love with our partner (having loving thoughts because we are in a loving, expansive state) and the next be filled with anger and obsessing about all the things they aren’t doing right (because we are in an angry state and our thoughts are reflecting this state). Your partner didn’t change, your state of consciousness did.

And, this flip flopping is a natural, normal, human experience that occurs when we are unaware of our emotional state and how our emotional state impacts our thoughts and our reality.

In other words, we are weaving in and out of all of the states of consciousness all day long. So, without the awareness of how Reactive Brain works (or how to move dense energy through the body when we’re in it), we often get swept up in our thoughts, believing all of them as true (which, who knows they may or may not be), not knowing why we feel so different from one day to the next, wondering why the hell we are so damn fickle about how we feel about our partner and if we want the divorce or not!

If you’re caught in a state of flip-flopping about whether or not you want a divorce, it’s likely you’re simply shifting in and out of Reactive Brain unknowingly. When you really get down to it, is your situation changing your decision or is it the way you feel that’s impacting your thoughts?

The cool thing about this awareness is, once you can see it, you are no longer at the whim of needing things outside of yourself to be a certain way in order to feel good. Instead, you have the power to shift your emotional experience. That’s right: you have the power – not your spouse, or anyone or anything else for that matter.

Now, I’m not saying that this means that you don’t have boundaries or that you have to like things you don’t like or want something you don’t want or that you can just spiritually bypass all your negative feelings to make things work out one way or another. I don’t know what’s best for you or your relationship or what will happen when you take your power back.

What I do know, is that as you become more aware of your emotional state and how to move dense energy out of your body (aka shift out of Reactive Brain into Creative Brain), you will tap into your deep inner knowing – the part of you that knows what it is you really want. In time, the answers will come, you will get clear, and above all else, you will reconnect with you.

Are you ready to shift so that you can get clear about what you really want? I’d love to support you along the way.