Often times, when familiar instances occur in our lives, we tend to make excuses. Whether it’s a sudden unexplained physical pain on your body or an unnecessary response from a loved one. Somehow, we have created some idea of why this happened.
For example, have you ever gone to bed feeling fine, and woke up in the morning and there is a crick in your neck? Our first thought is, “oh, I’m sure it was the way I was sleeping, I must have slept on too many pillows. Although these ideas may be true, we’re not sure. If the pain then we begin to question, “what’s really going on? “ Now, we dig a little deeper. We may start with consulting, our close friends or family members, or we may Google some of the symptoms, and then, finally, we seek help with a Professional. This is when we are fresh out of ideas, bewildered, and concerned, we finally decide to schedule a doctors appointment.
Many times we use the same assessments in our relationships. First, we discover something is not quite right, and we easily create an excuse. For example, let’s say you come home from work, one day, and your companion lashes out. From your perspective, there is no particular reason for this behavior, but they are creating an argument about something that you deem to be minuscule and easier to talk about rather than argue.
Here again, because the argument is not that big of a deal, and we may have experienced it, or heard about it in the past, we make an excuse for it. We may say something like, “ wow, they must’ve had a bad day today at work“ or “he must be really stressed out about of that presentation tomorrow,” etc. Until it happens again.
A few days later, another small argument occurs, and we begin to wonder, “why is this happening.” Then your thoughts turn into questions like, “was it something I said?” or “I can’t believe this is us.” However, this time we need to get a second opinion. So we reach out to a close friend, or a trustworthy family member to get their perspective. We may even decide to do a little research on mood swings, signs, your partner is cheating, ways to improve your relationship, etc. We go in this huge self help, Private Detective training session on 50 ways to save your relationship.
As they say, the third time is a charm, right? So this time we will instantly confront our companion about the situation, and ask direct questions. And then, of course, once we’ve exhausted all of our excuses for why this may be happening, we finally reach out to a professional.
These are very practical steps we tend to take take when we give our companions the benefit of the doubt or refer to past experiences in order to maintain an optimistic outlook on our relationship, or seemingly minor injuries. The purpose of this blog is to make some comparisons on how we assess various situations the same way.
At the end of the day, we do not want an excuse to override the need for an immediate assessment, and /or professional help. Because the cause of the issue may be deeper than our past experiences. Think about it, one of the first questions the doctors ask is, “how long has this been going on?“