Episode 275

How To Cultivate Faith When It’s Low & Dealing With A Passive Aggressive Partner (Listener Q&A)

How do you find and cultivate faith when you haven’t felt it before? And what can you do when your partner uses passive aggressive behavior when faced with conflict?

These are things that we all face, life situations that feel unclear, frustrating and unenjoyable. I’ve been there and I’ve had to navigate my way through them.

In today’s episode I’m reading a couple of listener emails, and sharing my thoughts.

If you have a question you’d like to ask me or a topic you’d like to suggest, you can reach me at matthew@matthewbivens.com or matthew_bivens

Transcript/Notes

Welcome to the Having It A.L.L. podcast!

I have 2 listener emails today.

Brittany writes:

My faith is missing from my 6 F’s and I don’t know what to do about it! I’ve never been religious and….I don’t know how to go about finding my faith of anything. Please help!

Faith and religion are different, tho commonly collapsed.

Google definition – complete trust or confidence in someone or something.

My definition; Faith = trust + surrender

^^ has nothing to do with religion!

Religion = a set of beliefs, doctrines, moral codes, and traditions. It’s the way some people choose to practice their faith.

I challenge you — you probably do trust or believe in something greater than yourself. What is it?

Ways to connect with Faith (I share these in an episode “Using Faith, Trust And Surrender To Expand Your Life“)

Find your “thin places” — emotional equations — the place where the gap between you and source is thinnest. Ex: for some going to the top of a mountain brings them closer to source. Reading about the cosmos. Going to a religious service.
Inspired by other people living in faith. Seeing possibility in other people living in faith. Even if you don’t know what it is for you, you see people who can identify something as faith and seem to be doing it well. Explore that.
My example: being in a church and being inspired by the people celebrating their god, and wondering what was going on within me.
Other examples: concerts, people who are completely exposed and connected with the music.
Another example: being around kids — the closest beings to Source.
When you birthed a child, watched a child get born, was with a person when they transitioned.
Have a conversation with people who are high in faith. Anytime you get into an extensive conversation with me, you’ll hear Faith coming up in one way or another. There’s a ton of TRUST and SURRENDER going on in my life on a daily basis, and hearing about it can help connect you with those things yourself. Last year I was experiencing a faith crisis around my business. Wanting so badly for certain things to appear NOW (“because I deserve them already, I’ve put in all this work!”), and being faced with the truth that my impatience and scarcity was attracting lack my way. So I really dug into faith, got back to focusing on my 1 thing, consciously shifted my attitude when I was thinking about money, put energy into the areas where I felt FLOW, trusting that by doing those things and letting go of the fear, all the things I wanted would begin appearing. And they did. One big example is Sarah and I being gifted a car (a nice car at that), and it happening AFTER I surrendered and let go.

Luis writes

Why do people hide behind sarcasm? Namely my wife. Batting of eye lashes, rolling of the eyes, quick one liners to “shut me up” or “put me in my place”. Is this a show of deep insecurity?

Passive aggressiveness, which can definitely be destructive in a relationship. I’ve done it in past relationships as a way to manipulate, as a way to get across what I really wanted to say but didn’t have the courage to just straight up say it.

It’s all a way to not deal with a conflict in a direct manner. so when you experience passive aggressive behavior, know that there’s something going on underneath the surface. Reacting to the passive aggressiveness will never solve the underlying issue, and you’ll probably just repeat the fight again sometime later.

My advice:

These breakdowns probably happen when tensions are high and/or emotions are high, and you’re trying to have an important conversation. So don’t get into those conversations when emotions are high like that. Do what you need to do to cool off, give her the space to cool half. Come back when you both are more calm.

If you’re having a hard time talking face to face, write it out instead. That can help you get your emotions in check and can help you both communicate.

Focus on what you can control. You cannot control how she’s showing up, so don’t try and control that. Instead look at yourself — what are you doing to contribute to the situation in a disempowering way? Are you pushing her buttons which she then reacts at? Are you being passive aggressive in your own way?

All of that is disrespect, no matter how you cut it, and it’s a big withdrawal when you do stuff like that. Creating a resolution in a conflict involves some level of openness and honesty, and it’s really hard to do that when there are withdrawals. So make sure you’re not making withdrawals, make deposits instead, and approach the whole thing when you’re both in a more calm space.

Recognize that at some point you may want to get a third party involved, counselor, couples therapist or something.

Love these questions!

If you have a question you’d like to ask me or a topic you’d like to suggest, you can reach me at matthew@matthewbivens.com or matthew_bivens

And if you want to join us in the last days of the TRUST Challenge, go to matthewbivens.com/Trust

That’s it for today. Keep BEing awesome and have a magical rest of your day.

My name is Matthew Bivens, here’s to you Having It A.L.L..

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