Friday 11 January 2019

How to Deal With Unhappiness at Home

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Life isn’t perfect and feeling unhappy sometimes is inevitable. But this doesn’t mean that you should just put up with being unhappy at home, nor does it mean that you have to make radical changes to be happy again.

Unhappiness at home is quite possibly the most stressful form of unhappiness. Your home should be a safe space where you can chill out with your family and just be yourself. If you are unhappy at home, you need to deal with the situation as quickly as possible.

Talk About the Problem
The first step to solving any problem is talking about it. If you aren’t feeling happy at home, you need to talk to your partner about what the problem is and start thinking about some solutions. Sometimes this can be really hard because it’s difficult to admit a fault or problem within a loving relationship.

Talking to Family Law solicitors could be a good move. Just because you are in a lawyer’s office doesn’t mean that you are now destined for a divorce. In fact, many couples who visit a lawyer are simply seeking a way to talk to each other in a safe space and actually come closer together as a result.

When you do talk about a problem at home, give yourselves a specific time to talk in a safe space and make sure that you talk and listen. It’s completely normal to have ups and downs in a relationship but you need to be honest with each other to make sure that you have more of the good times.

If you can, try to isolate what the main issues making you unhappy are. It might feel really complicated to begin with but as you talk, you might realise that a very small thing is having a big knock-on effect that is making you unhappy. By making a few small changes, you might find that the bigger problems go away by themselves.   

Make Some Changes in the Home

It might sound like the kind of thing an overpaid interior designer might say but there is some truth in the idea that your environment shapes your behaviours. The clearest example of this is the way that mess can control your life. If you can’t move around your house or relax on the sofa without moving a whole load of junk, you have a big problem.

Tidying up might not be quite the solution you thought you needed at home but the new Marie Kondo show on Netflix would beg to differ. The tidying up guru shows that when you know where your stuff is and you aren’t constantly falling over things you don’t need, you have more energy to spend time with your family and be calm.

You should also make sure that you have calm spaces you can retreat to. Your bedroom is a good place to start and neutral colours, soft furnishings and gentle lighting can all make a big difference. Even if you are a maximalist at heart, creating a calm environment is really important for creating a space where you can think clearly.

Balance Your Lifestyle
Your lifestyle encompasses everything from work to play and finding the balance can seem impossible. We are all stretching ourselves all the time to be amazing at work, fantastic parents and perfect partners when really what we want most is a quick nap to recover! You can’t do it all all the time so you need to learn how to prioritise and what will make the biggest difference.

Let’s start with that nap craving. A good night’s sleep is really important for everyone so establishing a healthy bedtime routine is definitely high on your list of priorities. When you are all well rested, you are much more likely to get on well together and have a good day - and that means you as well as the kids!
Getting into good habits will also help. We are all guilty of focussing too much on the negative that we forget to say what is going well and what is positive. Using the different love languages every single day can really help here. Get into the habit of seeing the positive and you will find that the negatives won’t pray on your mind so much. You might even find that now the problem doesn’t seem so big, it is a lot easier to manage and resolve.

Work Together
Everyone should feel safe and happy at home and so it is everyone’s responsibility to help. This means that even if you all have your own jobs to do and don’t really deviate, you are all working towards the smooth running of your home.
Getting your kids involved in keeping your home safe and tidy cannot be recommended highly enough. Not only is this a chance for them to learn some key life skills like cooking and cleaning, it is also an opportunity to develop their sense of responsibility and achievement. Working together to reach a goal is the best way to build a team and to bond with your family and whether you are cleaning the house, preparing dinner or building Stonehenge, working together is good for social cohesion.

Mixing things up is also crucial for happiness. While routine brings stability, if you weren’t completely happy before, doing the same thing over and over isn’t going to make you happy now. If you all have your own jobs, maybe you could try swapping them about and seeing what it is like to do something different. This is good for seeing other people’s opinions and gaining their experiences firsthand.
When you are unhappy at home, life can feel really heavy and difficult. But when you start to address the problems, instead of trying to hide them, you will quickly see that even the smallest positive changes can have a big effect. While nobody can promise you true and everlasting happiness, the best partners can help you through and will work with you to make things better.
You can do it together.

**Collaborative Post**
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