The 5 Partnerships: Mirrors of Self-Regulation
The chime of my email echoes through space like a call to arms. It's the end of the day. I'm almost through a product launch, a defamation attempt, and a total relaunch of a company. At this point, I would like a nap, not an email.
I open it without realizing I’m holding my breath and tensing my shoulders. I scan it quickly. A client is ending their contract.
"Thanks," is all I want to reply. My mind has a lot more to say: "Why me, why now, how could they, don't they know ..."
I head upstairs to leave the day behind. But if you've been in my shoes (which I suspect you have), you know you’re going to do anything but leave that day behind. You are about to project it onto everyone and everything around you, even if subconsciously.
I am a walking poster child of reactivity right now.
The Spiral Begins
At the top of the stairs, I'm met by the dog, tail wagging as if she's just seen me for the first time in 10 years (even though she walked up the stairs with me)
“Not now,” I gruff. “Maybe later.”
She drops her frisbee in defeat, yet remains loyally by my side. She just wants to help. She always does.
I have food ready for the week, but I opt for something more comfortable. I order delivery. I'll take dopamine wherever I can find it. I forget to feed the dog.
My girlfriend comes home. I go to meet her with a smile.
"What's wrong?" she says after one glance at me.
"Nothing," I say, trying to hide in plain sight. She doesn't deserve to also bear the burden of my career choice, but all my soul wants to do is be vulnerable with her. Instead, I compartmentalize.
As I tell her we’re having takeout (which I didn't consult with her on), her face falls with defeat.
"OK," she says. Attempting to handle me gently, I can tell. She hasn't failed her commitments; mine, however, have bled over. She becomes agitated. My over-stimulated self, unable to self-regulate, attempts instead to co-regulate us both.
This, of course, does not go well.
We are fighting about pizza. None of this is about pizza. Then it becomes personal, a shot across the bow. Finances come up. Perspectives come up. Character comes up. The past comes up.
Over-stimulated, under-regulated, and exhausted. Full-blown anger finds its way home. Anger, the easy emotion.
The ending though, is happy.
Because what came next was awareness. I stepped out of the active participant role and into the active observer role instead. I was able to see the events of the day as they happened, not as they happened to me.
"I'm sorry."
The Mirror Moments
You likely have a story like mine. The details might differ, but the circumstances remain.
There's a common red thread running through the work I’ve done over the last 20 years, and it's the individual. This might come as no surprise to you as you read this, but it almost always comes as a shock to people when I highlight the mirror moments in moments like the one I shared above.
In life, most of us are more aware of how things are happening to us rather than how we are happening to them — i.e, how we show up in various and common situations. Even more complex is how behaviors arise in those situations, and usually do so quite regularly.
By the time a client makes it to me, I am grateful. They are acutely aware they have some work to do. They’re most often in a plateau, experiencing a resistance they are unable to break through, or, unfortunately, facing some demoralizing events.
"Something's gotta change" is the most common version of what I hear on discovery calls.
But what's interesting is that in most situations, what follows suggests that what they mean is what’s happening to them has to change, not how they meet the events happening because of them. A common disillusion is that life happens to us. The truth is life happens for us — particularly in response to how we project ourselves into it.
Beyond Personal Development
Generally, most clients have done a lot of personal work before they get to me. Hours and years of therapy, leadership development, etc. But it's not until you hire me or someone like me (if they exist) that someone watches your life in real time, highlighting where you keep showing up.
"In moments like this, why do you seem to choose to act this way?"
Generally flabbergasted, they respond, "I never even noticed."
This, of course, is the work of a coach. But there's some work you can do on your own, too.
If we are truly lucky in life, we will face conflict in areas of growth potential. Like all growth, it requires discomfort. But in the five partnerships, we have a notion that they should be comfortable. Spoiler: They will not. Not if they are to be meaningful, anyway, and I hope for your sake they are meaningful.
A partnership might need a bit of a definition. It's simply two or more people working together for a common resolution. Resolution being the operative term. Because resolution cannot exist without conflict. Conflict, however, is always conflated with aggression and argument. It's not; it's far more common. It's any discussion in which an agreement is made. Spoken or otherwise.
The vast majority of people go through life avoiding conflict (due to their own stories) and in doing so, avoid resolution. This leaves partnerships as single entities co-existing. Assuredly they will crash into each other at some point, inevitably.
The 5 Partnerships
In life, there are five partnerships that present themselves daily in the work I see with my clients. These partnerships are the circumstances that my clients find themselves in. But these partnerships, as I call them, are not partnerships at all — at this moment, they are situationships at best. Because what I hear from all of my clients is pointed fingers. What someone said, or someone did, how something happened, how they experienced it. But it's in these magic moments I can ask, "But how did you show up?" Which is a massive prime mover in the lives of my clients. Because by the look on most of their faces, it's not until that moment they’d even considered the pattern.
These five partnerships, if we are lucky enough to experience them, are:
Professional (business, leadership, performance)
Personal - a meaningful relationship, platonic or romantic.
Parental - needs little explanation, but yes, animals do count.
Physical - health, fitness, and hobby.
Phinancial - (See what I did there) Money is just human behavior in currency form.
The truth is there are a couple more, but these are the five that have the most impact, in my perspective, and they are the most common. They also are the ones where I most often hear that someone or something else outside of them has to change.
In Professional, it's usually bad bosses or bad customers. In Personal, it's a bad significant other or friend. In Parental, it's a bad child. In Physical, it's bad luck. In Profit, it's bad luck, timing, or events.
The Mirror Effect
But these five partnerships are actually mirrors. In all of these, the constant is you. In all of these, the common theme is how you interact with the situation. Now, I'm not advocating for staying in an abusive or toxic situation. It's just that it's more rare than most would like to accept. Worse, the reason we often find ourselves in them is because we create and enable them. But that's its own blog post.
In life, especially all the great parts and areas of it — kids, love, fun, etc. — the constant is chaos. The very nature of life's greatest moments is pure chaos. But in the most beautiful of ways. All the chaotic elements self-regulated, working together in blissful unison. But add one dysregulated variable? Chaos will ensue. Unless, of course, you provide the antidote: Self-regulation.
Which in all of these instances, mine above included, is our ability to step out of the experience and observe it rather than participate in it. Self-regulate — and by putting on our mask first, everything else begins to take focus. The truth is chaos can be beautiful when you choose to observe it rather than want to will it away or try to avoid it. Chaos is the experience of existence. And we can either view the world around us as happening to us, or we can see that it's happening for us. For how we show up in it.
The five partnerships are life's greatest teachers. They are also life's most uncomfortable moments. But because of that, nothing allows us to grow better. If we allow it — rather than try to avoid it.
From Reflection to Regulation
Are you seeing your own mirror moments in these partnerships? Do you recognize the patterns in how you show up when challenged in your professional life, relationships, parenting, health pursuits, or financial decisions?
At Paradigm Collective, we specialize in helping high-performers move from reactive to responsive across all five partnerships. Our unique coaching approach focuses not on changing your circumstances, but on transforming how you show up within them.
Ready to shift from participant to observer? Join our "Partnership Patterns" intensive, where we'll help you identify your recurring responses across all five domains and develop a personalized regulation strategy that transforms chaos into opportunity.