Picking up where we left off a couple of days ago, here’s Part 2 of my interview with Dr Giles P Croft all about relationships.

Over to you Giles:

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Tom: Can you tell us about a client who had a relationship that completely shifted? What changed to make that happen?

Giles: Ironically, the biggest shifts I’ve seen with people’s relationships have been when they’ve come to me with some other problem. They’re super stressed at work, or they’re signed off with burnout; they’re suffering from insomnia or they can’t control their angry outbursts, so we do the work – always looking upstream to how our experience is being created. And after a few weeks, everything changes for them, they’re seeing the world through new eyes, and it’s almost as a side effect of that change that their relationships really blossom.

As humans, we’ve got this strange tendency to get fixated on problems. And ironically, it’s that very fixation on the “problem” that keeps them in place. It’s like a circular, self-fulfilling thing. So whatever someone comes to me with, we spend very little time with the spotlight on that… and as we explore the nature of things in general, the problems dissolve of their own accord. Including those to do with relationships.

It might sound strange, but they get to a point where it just doesn’t make sense to have relationship problems any more. And they find they don’t. I think all of us can probably look back at changes we’ve been through in our lives, and see that they came about as a result of a change of heart; a shift in the way we see things.

Tom: Have you ever worked with a client or couple where you thought “no way is this going to work”, but it did? What turned it around?

Giles: As the years have gone by, I’ve learned that what I think is going to happen with a client, almost never does. Life surprises us, so I always leave room for that and showing up without expectation to the best of my ability. It’s the only way the work’s going to be effective. I have no idea what’s going to happen, or how we’re going to get to the place they want to be – that’s part of the fun of this approach!

But I do remember being super-nervous once, working with someone who was a therapist themselves. I’d had a period where I’d been rushed off my feet doing tons of group-work for organisations, and hadn’t done any 1:1 for a while, so my mind was giving me all sorts of grief about being rusty. For some reason, I think I even went as far as trying to set expectations about what we were likely to be able to achieve over the number of sessions that they’d signed up for (four, I think). I can remember having almost those very words (“no way is this going to work!”) rattling around in my head. I was really insecure in the run up.

But as always, I showed up, left all that insecurity outside the door, was fully present, and listened, getting curious about how they were seeing things. Thirty minutes into our first session together, they’d had an insight so colossal, you could have heard the penny drop on the moon!!! 😂 

All their problems — every last one of them! — had been being held in place by one, innocent, completely invisible belief they were holding, and when I gently questioned it, the entire edifice crumbled. It was one of the most powerful transformations I’ve ever witnessed, and we just got to hang out and have fun for the remainder of our sessions together.

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The third and final part of the interview isn't far away.

Before then, if all this talk has got you pondering the whys and wherefores of deeper, more fulfilling and more constructive relationships, you might like to pick up Giles’s Video Relationships Masterclass.

Giles usually sells this Masterclass for £149. 

But until 8pm UK time on 6th Feb, you can pick it up as part of a wider, special £80 bundle. 

All the details are here

To fulfilment,

Tom 

p.s. here's what's included in the bundle:

• Giles’s Video Relationship Masterclass (usually £149)
• An annual subscription to Giles’s Daily Reminders (usually £90)
• The Mission: Unflappable bonus I recorded with Giles (I’ll be selling this for £49 once this promo is over)
• Giles’s new Relationships Self-Study Course (worth £97)