In this article, I will describe an exercise developed to increase personal awareness within family or romantic relationships. It can be helpful if you want to understand an unpleasant situation that arises in your communication with a significant other. To perform it, choose an event, your own action, your partner's action, or a feeling that causes discomfort, and then fill in the following awareness zones, either by yourself or with your psychologist:
1) Feelings Zone. Describe the feelings that arise in the situation you want to understand. It will be better if you not only recall them but imagine the situation as if it is happening here and now and re-experience the emotional reactions. This approach will be more accurate.
2) Rules Zone. These are the explicit and implicit rules accepted in the relationship, according to which you organize your life, including outside of direct communication with your partner. Describe the rules of your relationship that come to mind after you have filled in the first awareness zone;
3) Attitudes Zone. These are your personal beliefs about what relationships are, your expectations of what they should be like. Write down here the attitudes that come to mind after filling in the first two zones (if you notice that your beliefs are hindering your relationships, it makes sense to seek help from a psychologist to rework them. This exercise will only help identify them);
4) Actions Zone. These are mutual interactions, i.e., communicative acts performed within the relationship. If you want to better understand a situation where you or your partner do something unpleasant, and feelings aren't as important, fill in this zone first. Otherwise, write down here what your actions and your partner's actions accompany or cause the feelings from point 1;
5) Zone of the Subjective Picture of the Relationship Situation. Here, describe how you envision the pattern or mechanism of the situation that interests you. It is important to mention not only your and your partner's actions but also the feelings and needs involved in the situation.
After completing, it is useful to clarify with your partner how much your fifth awareness zone corresponds to their view of what is happening.
Example (used with client consent, approximately, from memory):
1) I feel disgust;
2) I must agree to communicate with V. more often than refuse. I must stroke V. a lot;
3) In relationships, people always enjoy mutual touches, and partners are always happy to see and communicate with each other;
4) Disgust arises when I touch V. more than I want to;
5) V. wants to touch me more often than I want it. She feels more comfortable than I do since I agree to touches more often than I desire in order to maintain the relationship (i.e., I force myself). However, I understand that she also feels uncomfortable since she goes long without getting what she wants. While I can do what I want. She seeks touches because, for her, they are a confirmation of my feelings for her. I agree to touch her when I don't want to because I defer to the attitudes about what relationships should be and suppress my own desires.
Sergey Shevchenko
