Your Most Important Relationship

With whom do you have your most important relationship? Some of the most typical answers to that question might be the one you have with your partner? Your children, or your parents. Whether you have one or more or none of those aforementioned relationships, what about your relationship with yourself? I often think about that in and around my therapy work, how about you? Regardless of whether you think of your relationship with yourself as something that exists, or that matters or see it as mere theory, there are still times where you are alone with your own thoughts. Your own feelings, right? What about the times when you make a choice and then later, there you are reckoning that choice with yourself. It might be during some of these times you speak with yourself, to yourself. What kinds of things do you say? Do you notice what kind of words you use? Are they the kinds of words you would use with those others that you purport to care about?

I wonder regardless of whether you see your relationship with yourself as the most important or not, whether it still matters how you talk to yourself and how you treat yourself. There are many reasons, but I think one reason would be it’s saying something about how much you value yourself. Another reason is what it can signal to others about how to treat you, hopefully that will be with consideration and respect. However, if the quality of your relationship with yourself isn’t something you have thought about, it may be difficult to even know whether you are treating yourself with due care and attention, so not realising how others are doing or not doing with that. I have heard and understand people’s concerns that caring about themselves, let alone having their relationship with themselves as the most important would make them selfish. Or strange. Or arrogant, however it doesn’t have to mean those things. Instead to think, speak and treat yourself with care and consideration is self care and support.

It can for example involve being realistic about how much of your time you have for yourself and others, and setting realistic expectations of what you can be and do for others can foster and maintain care in all your relationships, the one with yourself and other. Which also leads to less pressure, resentment and disappointment. Whereas caring for others at the cost of yourself can lead to burnout at work for example, or paradoxically to neglect of yourself and your other relationships. So whether it is considering your relationship with yourself as the most important.

Or it is important in and amongst your other relationships, the perspective that looking after your relationship with yourself is something that is valuable and either way will include benefits for you, and your other relationships. As in rather than an instead of, it’s an as well as. Thank you for stopping by, maybe topic of discussion has some resonance for you, maybe not, thank you anyway and see you again soon.