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hey guys I'm Heidi PRI welcome back to my Channel or welcome if this is your first time here this month on this channel we've been talking about intimacy so how to develop deepen and Foster intimate connections with anyone
Heidi Priebe explains why personal growth can feel threatening to close relationships and offers a three-step approach to help loved ones adjust to your positive changes.
Key Takeaways
- Personal growth often disrupts established relational patterns, which can cause resistance from others
- Unconscious relational contracts ('games') shape how people interact; making them conscious allows for intentional change
- Communicating changes with good faith and inviting new forms of connection can help relationships evolve
- Patience and space are essential, and some relationships may need to change form or distance to survive growth
What the video covers
- Introduces the common fear that healing or personal growth will take a person away from their closest relationships
- Explains that when one person changes, others may unconsciously push them back into old roles and habits
- Offers a charitable interpretation: others may simply not know how to connect with the new version of you rather than wanting you to stay unhealthy
- Shares a personal example of friends responding to her serious struggles by joking, which frustrated her until her therapist offered a compassionate reframe
- Step one: become clear on the unconscious relational 'games' or contracts governing a relationship, drawing on transactional analysis (Eric Berne's Games People Play)
- Describes common relational games such as externalizing blame or dismissing feelings, which feel safe because they are predictable
- Step two: communicate the change openly and neutrally, assuming good faith and framing the shift as an invitation rather than a judgment of the past
- Suggests proposing new 'bids for connection' and new shared activities that keep people involved while the relationship adjusts
- Step three: be generous with time and space, recognizing that some people need patience to adapt, and that not every relationship will change alongside you
- Emphasizes that outgrowing a shared fantasy or identity can be painful but is a normal part of individuation in relationships
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction: Intimacy and the Fear of Changing
- 01:30Why Growth Threatens Close Relationships
- 03:04Reframing Others' Resistance Charitably
- 04:47Personal Example: Friends Who Joke About Pain
- 05:47Step One: Identifying Unconscious Relational Games
- 08:23Step Two: Communicating and Proposing New Connections
- 15:15Individuation and Letting Go of Shared Fantasies
- 18:59Step Three: Offering Time and Space
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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in your life who you'd like to get closer to and to cap things off now that we're at the end of the month I want to talk about a specific problem that a lot of people who end up on some type of
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attachment healing Journey or who end up otherwise entrenched in self-work face at some point or another which is the problem of feeling like you are developing in these new ways and you are trying to relate to the world and to
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yourself and to other people in a way that is very different from the way you've done so in the past and noticing that this is causing disruptions inside of your personal relationships so I think that a lot of people have this
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kind of deeply rooted fear that they're going to heal in a direction that takes them away from their closest most intimate connections and so what we're going to do today is do a little bit of unpacking around that phenomenon so why is it that
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this is the case why is it that our growth or our development or any change that either party makes inside of a close relationship can serve as a threat to the relational Dynamic and how do we go about managing that threat so if we
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want to keep healing keep growing keep doing work on ourselves but there's people we really don't want to leave behind how can we maximize our chances of maintaining those relationships and potentially even allowing them to grow and flourish into something completely
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new I believe that there is absolutely an art form to this and it's one that can be incredibly fruitful for all people involved so something I remember reading and just otherwise coming across while I was at this point of trying to
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figure out how to navigate these changing relationships is the idea that when you start changing when you start showing up in a healthier way other people are unconsciously going to start trying to push you back into your old
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roles or your old habits or your own unhealthy behaviors and I want to say I think that this is absolutely true for the most part however there are different ways that we could interpret bad right so we could look at this as
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other people want us to stay unhealthy they want to stay blind to their own bad behavior or they need us to serve as the scapegoat for them so they are going to be highly resistant to our healing and
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it's possible that in some cases this is true this is not to Discount the fact that there are deeply unhealthy systems we might be entrenched in interpersonally that may have a genuine vested interest in US remaining unhealthy but there's also the
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possibility to take a more charitable interpretation of other people's behavior when they start to feel threatened by our growth and that charitable interpretation might be that they just want to keep connecting with us but they don't know how now that we
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are changing in some significant way so I remember kind of hitting this point in my own attachment healing Journey where I started getting really annoyed by the fact that my friends would always talk to me about the Romantic relationship I
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was in at the time in a very kind of light-hearted way they would just default to making jokes or making light of whatever pain or struggle I was going through and the thing is for many many years that was exactly how I approach
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any pain in my life or any challenge I would make light of it I would be self-deprecating I would tell a joke so that it didn't feel as heavy or as real to me or to other people and I remember
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one point bringing it up with my therapist and going you know I'm really frustrated because I'm trying to talk about my relationships in a more grounded and mature way and I'm trying to take a very different approach and
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take my life more seriously than I have in the past but I feel like my friends are very resistant to it I feel like they just keep coming at me with this same old energy of making light of
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things and I don't know what to do about that and I'll never forget him telling me well tidy that's how they know how to connect with you this has been the norm inside of those relationships for a decade plus they probably have no idea
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how to make a connection with you as the person you're becoming now because that version of you is still brand new to you never mind them so of course they're going to feel a little bit panicked when you're not receiving the bids for
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connection that they are giving you that have worked so well for the entirety of the time that they've known you and I remember being struck by what an empathetic and charitable approach that was so looking at what I was
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interpreting as people trying to push me into past patterning that was no longer working for me as people simply giving me bids for connection that I was now shooting down which was probably making them feel very insecure and distressed
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inside of the relationship so what we're going to talk about is a three-step process for figuring out whether a relationship is going to be able to change alongside you or whether it's something that you need to give some
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space and of course there are tons of gray areas in between here but if you have a particular relationship whether it's your romantic relationship your close friends your family Dynamics and you really want to see if you can build
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it into something new here are the things I'm going to recommend you try step number one of three is going to be getting super clear with yourself on which underlying cont contracts are governing your relationship with that person so this is probably something you
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have never had to consciously think about before and a good book that serves as a resource for this though it is incredibly Antiquated in many of its views because it's from I believe the 60s is the book games people play by
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Eric burn so games people play is a book that's about transactional analysis transactional analysis is all about analyzing what's happening under the surface of every conversation that we're having so often what we're doing when we're in a conversation with anyone is
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that we're inviting them into some premise so the premise of your relationships might be something like when you and I are together we don't take accountability for our role in things we blame other people we vent about our partners we vent about work
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and we pump each other up and tell each other this is not a you problem this is an everyone else problem so externalizing might be a game that you are playing underneath the surface of your conversations with a friend and you
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might play that game over and over and over in different contexts and with different content or you might be playing the game feelings don't matter everyone is irrational except for us who see things clearly all of the time this
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might be the implicit unconscious contract that you have inside of that relationship and usually when we are following the rules of these unconscious games that we've created inside of our relationships everyone feels safe because they know what to expect and
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what types of interactions are most likely to get their bids for connection met and what we're doing when we start growing or changing the way that we operate inside of relationships or even the way that we operate internally is
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that we're starting to want to change the rules of those unconscious games and the best way to do this in a way way that does not cause stress and panic for everyone involved is to first and foremost sit down and really think to
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yourself about what type of games are running under the surface of your interactions with a given person and I do recommend reading this book just for inspiration around what types of games are available because there's just so many different flavors and so many
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different types but the idea here is that you want to make conscious for yourself what are the rules that we have established inside of this relationship and which rules would I like to start breaking which games do I no longer want
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to play step two in this process is you have a conversation with the other person where you make explicit which rules you would like to break so at this point what we're doing is taking a proactive approach to containing the
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relational change for the other person and it doesn't hurt to note that this can actually be very threatening for another person because they might see you wanting to engage in a different way that maybe they aren't comfortable with
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yet as a threat to their connection with you and so I find what helps when we go about these conversations is to use ey language as much as possible so instead of hey let's make all of these changes
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just chatting with them about the changes that you want to make so hey I know that you're really used to me brushing everything off and treating everything as a giant joke but something I've really been noticing is that that's
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made me really struggle with my personal relationships cuz I haven't been taking things seriously and so I keep ending up in these same types of loops and patterns that don't feel healthy to me so even though I still love joking with
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you and I still love our relationship I'm wondering if you're willing to kind of be patient with me and make a little bit more room for me to start exploring my relationships in a more serious way and you can give them the option to
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think about that and see whether it feels right for them or not and something that's going to be really important here is making sure that you are not talking smack about the way that the two of you used to relate which can
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be really tempting when we're at a certain point in the change process because as soon as we start doing things in a different way the ego is naturally going to want to feel contempt for the way that we used to do things because it
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wants to make it really clear to us inside of our own minds that that way is bad discarded and this way is better we need to try this on but if you have contempt for the way that you used to
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approach things even if it was only a couple of weeks ago and you're going into a conversation with someone where you're trying to show them the new way that you'd like to do things they're likely going to feel kind of put down or
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threatened if you're talking about the version of you that they're used to being connected to as very immature or pathetic or unable to deal with anything even though you might need to think of yourself that way secretly inside of
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your own mind for a little bit it's probably best to just make it clear to the other person I'm doing this because I want a certain result that is different from what I've had in the past but that doesn't mean you have to go
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into this long tie raade about how in the past you did things in a stupid emotionally immature way that's going to get their defenses up and it's just going to make it a more difficult conversation to navigate so we're going
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to try to frame this as positively and as neutrally as possible so once again just trying to assume good faith here can go a really long way we might be going going into these interactions imagining that the other person is just
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going to reject us and think that what we're saying is stupid and if we go in with that idea we're going to go in with really defensive energy but if we go in imagining that this other person might
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be very open to this and that they might actually be excited to grow in that direction with us we're probably going to have a much easier time navigating that conversation something that I've really learned is that relationships are
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incredibly powerful tools when when one person starts showing up in a way that is different often even if there's initial resistance from other people or they need to take some steps back for a while there can be something very
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contagious about watching someone you're close to and identify with quite a bit making a positive change but it's probably not going to happen instantly so we have to make room for there to be some interpersonal growing pains in this
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process and we're going to talk about that after we talk about step three which is finding new connection points inside of your relationship with this person so this is the art of finding new games to play with the people in your
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life if you used to play the game of pretend everything's fine don't make a fuss and don't talk about any of your real feelings think about how you can propose a game that you would like to play more and how you can invite the
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other person into that game in a way that feels comfortable for them them based on where they are in their Journey so not expecting them to have done all of the same work that you've done or to be in the exact same place as you are
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but to try to find ways to meet them where they're at and start moving more in the direction of the type of connection that feels more authentic to you based on the ways that you're growing so thinking about how do I start
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inviting this person into more self-responsible conversations where instead of externalizing everything I lead by example and I start talking about how I want to show up differently for myself and inside of relationships and just see how they're willing to
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respond to that or introducing in small ways more emotional intimacy or more bids for authentic conversations and just see what happens as a result and so this is an ongoing process of trying to find new ways to keep in connection with
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someone that are different from the ones we've had in the past maybe the way you relate to each each other emotionally is going to feel kind of weird for a while but there's a new hobby you can pick up
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together or there's some activity you can start doing together that still keeps you in each other's lives in a different way while the relationship is going through those Growing Pains so this is about you proposing new bids for
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connection to the other person if you are going to be denying the ones that they are throwing your way because you no longer want to play those old games you have to be the one to find new ones
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to bat over to them and see if they're willing to accept them you might be really surprised at all of the potential that exists within your relationship with someone that you were previously leaving completely untapped so this can be a really
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positive process for both people involved you might realize how much you've been underestimating the people in your life because you've just been defaulting to these games not knowing that this other person was willing to play a whole host of other ones with you
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but of course it's not always going to go that way so we're going to spend a little bit of time talking about how to deal with a situation where someone in your life is really resistant to the ways that you would like to change your
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relationship with them so often when we're very close to someone when we have an intimate connection with them our identity is in some ways kind of wrapped up in their identity even if it's not a particularly in meshed relationship to
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be attached to someone means that there's a shared relational Norm an identity that gets built over time and in this process where we're wanting to individuate and we're wanting to grow in a new way we have to be explicitly clear
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with ourselves around what is my stuff what is my identity what is my ego and what is the other person's stuff what is their identity what is their ego and we have to be as clear as possible with
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ourselves about this because it helps us not take it personally when someone doesn't want to change with us it doesn't mean that the change we want to make is wrong or bad and it also doesn't mean that them not wanting to change in
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that way with us is wrong or bad we are just a separate individual system from that person and the changes that might be working really well for us would actually be quite disruptive in their life in a way that would not work as
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well for them so we have to be willing to practice some humility and recognize that we are not doing something that is UN at erally better and they are doing something that is unilaterally worse we are just doing something that is right
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for us and they are doing something that is right for them and they don't need to approve of or understand the changes that we're making in order for the changes that we're making to be what's right for us it's very easy when we're
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insecurely attached to get really fixated on what's right and what's wrong instead of just what's right for me and what's wrong for me we don't have to be on the same page with everyone we're close to which doesn't mean it feels
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easy to be on different pages it just means that it doesn't mean we are morally wrong if they don't agree with what we want to change and vice versa the second thing we want to do is try to
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really get in their shoes and empathize as much as we're able to with why this change or this new relationship Dynamic that we're proposing to them might feel threatening to them so when we have closeness intimacy with someone what
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we're essentially doing is mirroring one another back to each other so that we can see ourselves more clearly through someone else's eyes and anytime the mirror starts changing that's pretty dysregulating for the person who didn't want to do the changing because all of a
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sudden this person who they're used to going to and getting a certain response from is giving them a different response and that different response that they're getting might actually be really hitting them in in places that it's hard for
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them to regulate around because remember you made the choice if you're on this journey to start confronting yourself in new ways this person did not make the same choice so if you were used to co-regulating with each other based on a
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shared fantasy so a shared way of looking at the world that isn't entirely accurate or that is perhaps overly generous to your views of each other and yourselves you were definitely doing that because it was what you both needed
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at the time and it was what was adaptive for both of you at the time but now if this is no longer adaptive for you it doesn't hurt to recognize that if you're going to start approaching your Intimate
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Relationships differently it is going to disregulated and force a change on that person who may not have chosen that and so it's not unlikely that they're going to need to take a bit of space in order to deal with that disregulation absorb
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the idea of this new Norm that you're proposing and figure out for themselves whether that feels right or wrong for them it's actually a very secure and healthy thing to be able to kind of withdraw check in with ourselves about
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whether some change that someone else wants to make inside of a relationship is right for us or not and then come back and reconnect with that person once we have our answer so if you're in this stage where you're proposing these new
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bids for connection or these different games that you want to play inside of your relationships and you notice that certain people are kind of pulling away or taking a bit of space it doesn't hurt to just give that person a lot of Grace which is the
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final thing I'm going to encourage us to take into account if the people in our lives are showing resistance to the changes we're making which is be generous with time and space some people will need a little bit of time to
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disconnect some might need years some might find that they don't want to stay in connection with where you're going and that might be incredibly hurtful but once again if we're really close to someone are changing in significant ways
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is going to cause a little bit of an identity disturbance for that person and that might be something that sets them off on a whole different Journey that we know nothing about and that they actually couldn't figure out when they
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were in connection with us or maybe they just straight up don't want to change they don't want to acknowledge the ways that you want to acknowledge your dynamic they don't want to bat those bids for connection back to you and
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that's also something that we need to be willing to accept might happen but it doesn't mean that you are right and that person is wrong it doesn't mean that you are good and they are bad or vice versa
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all it means is that what is functional for you at this point in your life is not functional for that person and so sometimes we do have to be willing to let people go but that doesn't have to
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be the default option often there are a lot of different things that we can try before we reach that point and even if we do reach that point we might find that later on in the future when we've
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both grown in different ways we do have the ability in the capacity to reconnect with that person but the only way we're ever going to find out which of those scenarios is possible is if we go into our relationships with good faith around
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the idea that someone might be willing in small or large ways to grow or change or adapt the relationship and be willing to take more creative approaches to connecting with people in new ways as always none of these are rules that you
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have to follow they are just options that you can try out if and when you want to see if your relationships are able to be a bit more malleable in the growth process I think that's all I'm going to say about this topic for today
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but as always let me know what your thoughts feelings perspectives are and questions that are coming up as you watch this video feel free to leave any of the above in the comment section below as always I love you guys I hope
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you're taking care of yourselves and each other and I will see you back here again really [Music] soon
Topics:attachment healingrelationship growthtransactional analysispersonal growthintimacyboundariesrelationship dynamicsself-workbids for connectionHeidi Priebe
