Pre Marriage Counseling » health

Can Couples Counseling Help If One Partner Is Suffering From Anxiety or Depression?

Joseph LeFevre — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 16:41:13 +0000

It should come as no surprise that life can be very difficult for any individual suffering from severe or recurring anxiety or depression. But how does one’s anxiety or depression affect their relationship, and can couples counseling help?

Everyone feels anxious or depressed from time-to-time, and common every-day occurrences, such as meeting tight deadlines, first dates, being turned down for a job, or just watching the evening news can cause mild feelings of depression or anxiety.

However, these types of mild anxiety or depression aren’t bad. In fact, they can be helpful and evolutionary advantageous as these types of depression and anxiety tend to make us more focused and alert when faced with challenging or threatening situations or more empathic to ourselves and others when feeling pain.

Unfortunately, severe anxiety and depression affect countless individuals each year and they often go hand-in-hand. And, unlike the brief anxiety and depression that can be caused by everyday situations, those who suffer from severe and recurring anxiety or depressive disorders experience emotional pain and distress over long periods of time that disrupt their lives, their abilities to function, and their relationships.

It’s not uncommon for a couple to seek counseling when severe depression or anxiety is wreaking havoc on one of the partners and, by extension, the relationship itself. However, it is relatively rare for couples to attend therapy specifically for this reason.

Most couples usually begin counseling to improve their communication and intimacy, work through feelings of hurt or resentment caused by infidelity, develop better parenting skills, or resolve any number of other issues that may be negatively impacting their relationship.

If one of the partners is depressed or highly anxious, it usually becomes apparent within the first few session of couples therapy. Ideally, the partner who’s struggling with anxiety or depression will be willing to take a look at these issues and how they are affecting the relationship — and they almost always are.

Unfortunately, many people will try to deny or minimize any role their anxiety or depression is playing in the difficulties the couple is experiencing. After all, so much of the individual’s self-conception can involve the anxiety or depression they’ve experienced for so long, it can be extremely difficult for them to see it and how it’s affecting their relationship. This doesn’t make it any easier for the other partner, who may feel stuck, worried, unacknowledged, or hopeless about the possibility of saving their relationship and recreating the connection they once shared with their partner.

While the best case scenario may be one in which both partners acknowledge the anxiety or depression, as well as its effects on their relationship, and work together to resolve the issue in a supportive environment, the couples therapist will likely need to take some time to educate the couple and explore the options available for addressing and resolving the individual’s anxiety or depression. These options can include:

Referring the individual suffering from anxiety or depression to another therapist for individual counseling,

Having the couples therapist work with the individual alone for a number of sessions before bringing them back to couples therapy, or even

Referring the individual to a psychiatrist if prescription medications seem warranted.

None of these options is to be taken lightly, and they should all be discussed in detail with your therapist prior to deciding on the best course of action.

If you or your partner is experiencing severe or recurring anxiety or depression that is impairing your relationship, you owe it to yourself to seek professional help.

If you’re already in couples therapy, your couples counselor or therapist can help you determine the severity of the anxiety or depression you’re dealing with, as well as provide a safe and confidential environment to discuss how these issues are affecting your relationship and the best treatment options available.

That having been said, if one partner is suffering from severe or recurring anxiety or depression, the individual will likely need specific anxiety or depression counseling outside the context of the couples work you came to therapy for in the first place.

Individual anxiety or depression counseling or therapy — whether or not it is used in conjunction with medications — is usually necessary in order to help you or your partner identify the thought patterns that cause anxiety or depression, learn and practice relaxation techniques, generate more positive ways of thinking about life, restore balance, regain control, and move forward in life and in your relationship with optimism and confidence so your relationship can once again flourish.

To learn more about psychotherapy, visit Pamela Levy’s website on parent counseling in Burlingame.

What Is Relationship Counseling and Is It Effective?

Joseph LeFevre — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 18:41:06 +0000

Relationship counseling — regardless of whether it’s called marriage counseling, couples counseling, or couples therapy — focuses on improving the relationship between two individuals.

Effective communication is a vital component of successful relationships, whether those relationship are professional or personal. Hence, it should come as little surprise that relationship counseling, in all its forms, focuses on helping couples communicate more effectively.

Because of relationship counseling’s focus on improving a relationship, it is often seen as being different from individual psychotherapy, which typically focuses on helping one person overcome specific emotional or psychological issues.

However, this difference is largely illusory, as emotional and psychological issues commonly involve an individual’s emotions, thought processes, and behaviors, as well as changes in their interpersonal relationships.

While couples therapy focuses on current relationship problems, these difficulties usually involve each partner’s emotional issues as well as the relationship conflicts that result. For example, if you or your partner is having difficulty managing anger, you’ll likely experience a continuous stream of arguments. Likewise, if you and your partner are constantly arguing, this will likely lead to anxiety, stress, or depression in other areas of your lives.

In couples counseling, a professional couples therapist will help both you and your partner identify the sources of conflict in your relationship. Once the underlying causes of relationship conflict have been determined, your therapist will help you determine the changes you and your partner can make as individuals, as well as what changes can be made in the ways you communicate and interact with one another, so that both of your emotional needs and desires are understood and met.

One of the biggest challenges couples face is the inability to stop blaming each other for the relationship’s difficulties. However, doing just this is critical if partners are going to learn to work together.

Couples counseling can help couples avoid the need to compete with one another, share responsibilities, and identify common objectives and goals that both partners can work towards together.

Ultimately, relationship counseling will allow you and your partner the opportunity to talk to each other, and more importantly, listen. This will help you explore your relationship, better understand the difficulties you face, take personal responsibility for your thoughts, feelings, and actions, understand each other’s needs and desires, and work together to create positive, lasting change.

Is couples counseling effective?

Couples therapy can help people in an intimate relationship, regardless of whether they’re heterosexual or homosexual, married or not.

According to the AAMFT, research has repeatedly supported the effectiveness of couples therapy. For example, in an article published by the Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, clients of marriage and family therapists from 15 states reported their experiences with couples counseling. The findings indicate that marriage and family therapists can effectively treat a variety of couples issues in a relatively short period of time and that client results and satisfaction levels are quite high.

Whether you’re looking to resolve a current conflict, better understand one another and strengthen your relationship, or address potential problems before they get out of control, couples counseling can help.

When should you seek couples counseling?

Unfortunately, couples counseling is often the last resort for partners that have been experiencing relationship problems. While it’s almost never too late for a couple to experience some benefits from couples therapy, the sooner a couple seeks professional help the more effective that help usually is and the better chance the relationship has of success.

Ultimately, if you and your partner are serious about creating the best relationship possible — whether you’re just starting out, considering getting married, or looking to reunite after being apart for some time — it’s never too early or too late for relationship counseling to help you explore your relationship, uncover and overcome destructive behavior patterns, learn more effective communication skills, build trust and intimacy, and rediscover the joy in your relationship.

To learn more about couples therapy, visit Joseph LeFevre’s website on group counseling in Campbell.

categories: relationship counseling,couples counseling,marriage counseling,counseling,therapy,psychotherapy,mental health,relationships,marriage,psychology,health

Relationship: Dance of Intimacy

Joseph LeFevre — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 18:40:09 +0000

The relationship duet is a dance of intimacy all couples do. One partner moves in, the other backs-up. Partners reverse roles as well, but always maintain a certain space between them. The unspoken agreement is the Pursuer chases the Distancer forever, but never catches-up, and the Distancer keeps running, but never gets away. They negotiate the emotional space between them. We all have needs for both autonomy and intimacy — independence and dependency, yet we simultaneously all fear both being abandoned (acted by the Pursuer), and being too close (acted by the Distancer). Thus, we have the dilemma of intimacy: How can we be close enough to feel secure and safe, without being threatened by too much closeness? The less room there is to navigate this distance, the more difficult the relationship. The higher is a person’s self-esteem, the more flexible and comfortable s/he is with greater distance and greater closeness. There is less anxiety, and hence less demand on the relationship to accommodate a narrow comfort zone.

ORIGINS: Current research suggests that intimacy problems originate in the early relationship between the mother and infant. Babies and toddlers are dependent on the mother’s empathy and regard for their needs and emotions in order to sense their “selves,” to feel whole. To an infant or toddler, emotional or physical abandonment threatens its existence and emerging ego, because of its dependency on the mother for validation and development of wholeness. Later, as an adult, being alone or separations in intimate relationships are experienced as painful reminders of the earlier loss.

If the mother is depressed, intrusive, or lacks wholeness and self-esteem, there are no boundaries between her and her child. Rather than responding to her child, she projects, and sees her child as an extension of herself, an object to meet her own needs. She can’t value her child as a separate “self.” The child’s boundaries are violated, and its autonomy, feelings, thoughts, and/or body, are disrespected. Instead of developing a healthy sense of self, the child discovers that love and approval come with meeting the mother’s needs, and tunes into the mother’s responses and expectations. The child learns to please, perform (or rebel), but in either case, gradually tunes out its own thoughts, needs, and/or feelings. Later, intimacy may threaten the adult’s sense of autonomy or identity, or he or she may feel invaded, smothered, controlled, shamed, and/or rejected — emotionally annihilated. A person may feel both abandoned if his or her feelings and needs are not responded to, and at the same time, engulfed by the needs of his or her partner. In relationships where partners lack self-esteem, sustained intimacy isn’t possible, because the fears of nonexistence and dissolution are so strong, and because there are not two separate, whole people coming together.

COPING STRATEGIES: Our defenses are the way as children we learned to behave in order to feel safe, without risking this abandonment or annihilation. As adults these behaviors create miscommunication. For instance, if you repress your anger to ensure closeness, you stand a good chance of alienating your partner, unaware that you may be expressing your anger indirectly. If you ignore your partner in order to create distance, you inadvertently devalue him or her, creating another problem.

Change and growth come in discovering your coping strategies, and learning new responses and behaviors.

Ask yourself: Am I aware when I need space and intimacy? How do I create space in my relationships? How do I protect my autonomy?

Do you criticize, blame, withdraw, or use substances to create space, be left alone, or lessen intense feelings. Or do you avoid closeness or openness by joking around, lying, showing off, giving advice, or by talking about others or impersonal subjects?

Do you get overly involved with people outside your partnership (e.g., children, friends, affairs), or activities (e.g., the internet, work, sports, gambling, shopping)? These activities dilute the intimacy in the relationship.

On the other hand, ask: How do I create closeness? How do I ensure that I will be loved and not abandoned? Do you try to create closeness by giving up your autonomy, hobbies, friends or interests, by never disagreeing, by being seductive, or by caretaking and pleasing others?

When these behaviors are operating without awareness, you are not coming from a place of choice. When this happens you cannot communicate effectively, nor take into consideration your needs and those of your partner. Instead, the relationship is based on unconscious manipulation of one another to meet your needs. This triggers your partner’s defensive reactions.

DISOWNED SELVES: Relationships can serve as mirrors for unacknowledged or “disowned” parts of ourselves. Often people attract their opposite into their lives to make them whole.

The Pursuer is unconscious that s/he is also afraid of closeness, but relies on the Distancer to achieve enough space for the Pursuer’s needs for autonomy and independence. Similarly, the Distancer is afraid of abandonment, but cannot experience the wish for emotional closeness as his or her own. S/he would feel too vulnerable, so s/he needs a Pursuer to satisfy her or his intimacy needs.

The Distancer says of the Pursuer: “She (or He) is too demanding, too dependent, too emotional, or too needy.” And wonders, “Can I love? Am I selfish? What I give seems never enough.”

The Pursuer says about the Distancer: “He (or She) is selfish, inconsiderate, inflexible, emotionally withdrawn, has to have things his way.” And wonders, “Is there something wrong with me? Aren’t I lovable (pretty, thin, successful, smart) enough?”

They each blame one another and themselves. The Distancer feels guilty for not meeting the other’s needs, and the Pursuer feels angry for not getting his or her own needs met. In reality, the Distancer judges the part of him or herself that is needy, dependent, and vulnerable, and the Pursuer judges the part of him or herself that is selfish and independent, but each sees the part they don’t accept in themselves projected onto the other. Both need to embrace the dependent and independent, feminine and masculine, parts of themselves.

CHANGE: The key to breaking this polarization is by becoming conscious of our needs and feelings, and risking what we fear most. It requires awareness of our coping behaviors and resisting the impulse to withdraw or pursue. It takes tremendous courage not to run when we feel too close, and not to pursue when we feel abandoned, but instead, learn to acknowledge and tolerate the emotions that arise. This may trigger very young feelings of shame, terror, grief, emptiness, despair, and rage. With the help of a therapist, these feelings can be separated from the present circumstance, in which as adults our survival is no longer at stake. As the feelings are worked through, a less reactive, stronger sense of self develops, one that is not easily threatened or overwhelmed.

Partners can learn from each other to embrace their disowned needs. The Pursuer can emulate the Distancer’s ability to set limits, to take care of his/her own needs, to prioritize, to be less personally involved. The Distancer can learn from the Pursuer’s flexibility, ability to reach out and ask, to feel others and to blend boundaries.

Each person must take responsibility for him or herself, rather than relying on their partner to take care of his or her needs for closeness or distance. The Pursuer must risk saying “No,” and tolerate the anxiety of separation, saying, “I can’t help you — I need to be alone.” The Distancer must risk saying, “I miss you, I need you.” In the movie, “The Doctor,” William Hurt plays a busy, successful doctor, whose wife feels neglected and abandoned. It’s only when Hurt gets brain cancer that he finally acknowledges and risks telling his wife that he needs her.

Each must learn to ask for togetherness and space directly, without feeling guilty, or controlling or blaming each other. When each is able to say “Yes” and say “No,” without the fear of being overwhelmed by intimacy or abandoned by separation, they won’t trigger each other’s defensive reaction. When they are conscious of their individual needs, they can acknowledge their partner’s needs with respect. They can empathetically hear each other, and wait to have their need satisfied: “I understand and hear your need and its importance to you, but this is also important to me — can we find a way to compromise?” As couples do this, they will have more authentic intimacy, instead of being locked into an unconscious duet of approach-avoidance.

Relationship can be an exciting path to the unknown. But it requires courage — courage to open yourself up and be vulnerable. The rewards are worth it, because it is a path of self-discovery and ultimately the divine as we open ourselves to one another. In the process we can heal our wounds, become free of our past conditioning, our defenses, and become truly live in the present.

Darlene Lancer is a marriage and family therapist in Los Angeles. For information on marriage counseling and a FREE Report on Transforming Self-Criticism into Self-Esteem, visit http://www.darlenelancer.com.

categories: counseling,therapy,psychotherapy,intimacy,mental health,relationships,marriage,psychology,health

What Happens in Couple’s Counseling

Joseph LeFevre — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 17:59:04 +0000

What happens when a couple goes to see a therapist for couple’s counseling? That depends upon the therapist. Doing therapy is an art form, and it is shaped by the particular theoretical orientation of the therapist. Most therapists are taught to draw upon a range of techniques and ideas, but how it is delivered will be unique to each therapist and with each couple. In this brief article I will describe what generally is going through my mind when I work with a couple in therapy.

My connection with the couple starts with their first contact with me. I notice which person is the one to make the call, and how that person is thinking about the problem for which they are seeking my help. Does he minimize the seriousness of the difficulties? Does she seem to be overly upset by an issue most people could handle fairly easily? Is there blaming of the other person either implied or directly? Does there seem to be some capacity for looking at the person’s own behavior as part of the problem?

Next I listen for issues of safety. Generally speaking if I detect that domestic violence is involved, I prefer to postpone working with the couple until they have each had some individual therapy. Couple’s counseling is usually working to strengthen a relationship, and I do not want to strengthen something that is toxic. The batterer and the battered need to be seen separately in most cases in order to truly intervene in the cycle of violence, whether it is physical or emotional.

Some therapists will have the patients fill out forms to gather history. Some even leave the forms in the waiting room to be filled out there, or actually send them in the mail ahead of time. My style is much different. I want all the information to emerge when we are together in the room. What the people choose to talk about is very helpful to me in understanding their ways of relating. For me to intrude with a list of my own questions about them sends a message that they are there to take care of me and my need to know. Part of being an adult is tolerating the unknown, so I want to model for the couple that I can tolerate not knowing a great deal.

Conversation starts when someone begins to tell me something. For me to ask if they had trouble finding a parking place, or some similar social chatter, tends to send a message that I think they are incapable of figuring things out, or that I think we are there for a social gathering, or that I am needing to put them at ease because I can’t tolerate anxiety. A gentle amount of anxiety is very helpful in getting down to the challenging business of figuring out what is not working so well in a relationship.

As each person has a turn to tell me what is going on between them and for them, I look for signs of strength and weakness in the relationship. I insist that each person speak for him- or herself , and not try to tell me what the other person is thinking or feeling. I shift the whole concept of couple’s counseling to the idea that each of them is there to find out how they each can do things differently in order to help the relationship. This often stands in contrast to an assumed goal: “Fix my partner!”

I like to help the partners see how they habitually project figures from their families of origin onto the partner, so that they are not actually relating to the person standing before them, but unconsciously trying to address hurts from decades earlier. If one person complains, for example, “You spend all your time at work and I just get the leftovers,” I would not be surprised that we end up talking about how neglected the person was by a parent. Some degree of that person’s upset might indeed be about how work-preoccupied their partner is, but a great deal of it might be about a childhood issue that needs to be grieved and accepted. Once a partner understands how a particular behavior has the effect of ripping open a tender emotional place in the partner, they may be less inclined to use that behavior.

Therapy is about accepting reality and being a grownup. When it becomes clear that one or both partners have issues from childhood that have derailed their ability to be mature and have appropriate concern and regard for others, then I will refer the patient for individual work. We are all doing the very best we can with what we have at the moment, and sometimes what we have is frankly inadequate. Individual therapy can often change that situation remarkably, and bring about an enlarged capacity for rich emotional experience and expression.

Couple’s counseling is not a magic bullet. Some relationships are simply beyond help. Some couples wait far too long to seek professional help, being caught up in the myth that we should be able to solve our emotional problems on our own, in the great cowboy tradition of self-sufficiency. But most of the time, people who come to see me for couple’s counseling are very grateful and wish they had come sooner.

To learn more about psychoanalytic therapy, visit Carol Campbell’s website on couples therapy in Menlo Park.

How Premarital Counseling Can Help Ensure the Success of Your Marriage

Joseph LeFevre — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 19:11:59 +0000

You’re probably familiar with the statistics… Approximately half of all marriages end in divorce.

Unfortunately, most people spend more time planning their wedding ceremony or honeymoon than they spend on the practicalities of making their relationship work and grow.

But open communication and planning is an integral part of not only making a relationship last, but for keeping the love and excitement alive throughout the years.

Fortunately, premarital counseling can help any couple openly communicate and effectively plan their future together. And research has shown that premarital counseling can help decrease the chance a marriage will end in divorce by as much as 30 percent.

What is premarital counseling and how can it help?

Given the broad usage of the word “counseling,” the term can be misleading. However, it’s important to note that premarital counseling is not therapy.

Premarital counseling is designed to help couples learn the skills necessary to improve their communication and effectively plan a healthy, happy, and long-lasting marriage.

Premarital counseling will help both partners identify and share their desires, concerns, fears, values, and beliefs, as well as discuss any issues that may lead to relationship conflict in the future.

Some of the many questions premarital counseling can help both partners address include:

Why do you want to get married? What’s motivating you?

Are you moving toward marriage or away from being single?

What are your expectations? What is the unstated contract you intend your partner to uphold?

How well do you know yourself and how well do you know your partner?

What is the cost to you to be in this relationship?

Premarital counseling will also help you:

Develop effective communication and conflict resolution skills

Openly discuss intimacy and sexual issues or concerns

Establish long-term goals for your life together

Ultimately, premarital counseling is about evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of a relationship prior to marriage in order for you and your partner to anticipate, and prepare for, conflicts and challenges that may arise down the road.

When should you seek premarital counseling?

As the name implies, premarital counseling is best undertaken sometime in the year prior to getting married. That having been said, premarital counseling can be beneficial couples even if they don’t begin the counseling until after they’ve been married a few months.

However, as more time passes and a relationship experiences more stress, unhealthy behavior patterns can become established that are increasingly difficult to break as time goes on. Therefore, premarital counseling is most helpful for couples who don’t wait more than a few months after getting married before beginning counseling.

Is premarital counseling right for you?

Without relationships, our lives remain stagnant. But when we engage with others and enter relationships with openness and curiosity, we bring ourselves to another person and allow them to bring themselves to us, enriching both lives in the process.

Open communication and asking difficult questions — acknowledging where and what types of problems might arise before they do — can be the key to a lifetime of love and happiness. Premarital counseling can not only help you and your partner ask the right questions, but answer them together openly and honestly.

Like other types of prevention, the best way to stop problems and issues from arising is to be pro-active. If you want to create the best relationship possible and keep it strong for years to come, premarital counseling can be vital to your success.

To learn more about couples therapy, visit Tom Eggert’s website on counseling in Seattle.

Great Communication — A Vital Tool for a Healthy and Happy Relationship

Joseph LeFevre — Sat, 26 Feb 2011 19:38:16 +0000

Without communication, there is no relationship. These words may sound harsh, but they ring with a truth that many couples find hard to face. Good communication in any relationship is like water to a plant. Without water, the plant won’t grow. Leave it dry long enough, and the plant will wilt and die.

In general, many couples get into arguments simply because they lack good communication skills. The simplest problems can lead to a falling-out when they are not brought out into the open early on. Holding onto hurts and keeping silent about problems leads to a build-up of negative energy between partners. This underlying tension causes strain on a relationship, gives way to more misunderstandings, and increases the frequency of arguments.

When fighting becomes a habit, it results in unhappiness for both partners. Most couples will desperately try to fix the problems that exist on the surface at a given point in time, only to end up wondering why the problems never seem to cease. What they often fail to realize is that there are underlying issues yet to be addressed — one of which is a lack of open, honest, clear communication.

So how can a couple improve their relationship? Well, the first step is to realize the importance of communication. Once they understand that positive, constructive communication is the foundation of a healthy relationship, both partners can work towards improving their communication skills.

One way for a couple to improve their communication skills is to seek couples counseling. The support and guidance provided by a professional relationship counselor can help couples voice their experiences and feelings in a safe and contained environment. If relationship counseling sounds like too big a step for you and your partner to take, here are some key points that may help you and your partner improve your communication:

Discuss problems at an early stage — Any problem, no matter how small, is best discussed when it is fresh. When couples neglect to do this — whether due to a perceived lack of time, an unwillingness to rock the boat, or any other convenient excuse — the problem becomes bigger over time, often resulting in an argument. Discussing problems early prevents misunderstandings, arguments, and grudges.

Don’t assume — Most people have different ways of expressing their feelings, and a comment or critique can often be taken the wrong way. When your partner says or does something that bothers you, don’t hesitate to ask your partner what he or she intended.

Don’t let emotions get the better of you — Fights between couples are always high on emotions. If you find yourself on the verge of an argument, take time out to cool off before saying things you might regret. Even a five-minute break can do wonders in clearing both your heads, and can result in a more constructive conversation.

Listen — Good communication is not only about saying what’s on your mind… it is also about listening! This means listening to your partner actively and attentively, not guessing what they’re about to say. Both of you have to be willing to give way to each other when speaking, allowing one to finish his or her thoughts before submitting your own. Attentive listening can help clarify misunderstandings, and solve many problems before they begin.

Practice good communication holistically — Good communication is not only about effectively resolving problems. Rather, it is to be applied throughout a relationship. This includes sincerely complimenting your partner, and honestly praising them for their efforts and endeavors. Positive affirmations can strengthen your mutual intimacy, appreciation, and trust, and can greatly improve your relationship.

If you’re experiencing relationship difficulties and are serious about making positive changes in your relationship, couples therapy is highly recommended. Relationship counseling can provide you the time, space, resources, and skills to communicate with each other more effectively.

Learning and practicing communication skills can be difficult at the beginning. But, once you and your partner begin to make positive communication habitual, it will become easier and you’ll be amazed at the results.

Our relationships begin and end on the power of our communications. Harnessing this power to create a happier, more successful life with your partner is a wise first step. Why not begin today?

To learn more about couples counseling, visit Sharon Post’s website on therapy in Santa Clara.

Couples Counseling and Therapy

Joseph LeFevre — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 23:05:35 +0000

It’s very important that couples seek therapy early on, while there is still good will between them. Like with any wound, the longer it festers, the more difficult is the healing process. When couples enter therapy to “save” their marriage from divorce, often one spouse has already left emotionally, and there’s a lot of resentment and “water under the bridge.”

In conjoint or couples counseling, therapists should maintain a neutral stance between the clients and also as to outcome. Not all therapists agree with this, and others cannot maintain neutrality, if they are not aware of their biases.

In relationships, “There are neither villains nor victims, only colluders and collaborators.” This doesn’t mean one spouse may not be a victim of abuse, but on a psychological, often unconscious level, their self-esteem or past may be keeping them from setting boundaries. Often people being criticized or abused minimize the problem or don’t even recognize it as such, but instead withdraw from their partner sexually or emotionally. In therapy, they can learn to value themselves and set appropriate boundaries.

If there’s physical or emotional abuse, the therapist must address this first, and should encourage prevention and the safety of the injured person. Sometimes, a therapist may spend time and empathize with angrier, withholding, or abusive client, to the dismay of their more cooperative partner. This is because the therapist is trying to engage the more resistant spouse, who might be averse to therapy. Getting them to open up and talk also helps to reduce their maladaptive behavior. They need to learn to express their feelings appropriately and control their anger.

Many clients expect there should be no conflict. This is unrealistic in any relationship. Also, couples may only feel safe to express their honest or angry feelings in the context of therapy. They need conflict resolution skills and to learn to communicate and resolve conflict before it escalates into a fight — skills that may never have been learned, particularly in intimate relationships. Therapists teach listening skills, assertive communication, and how to identify and needs and feelings, set boundaries, and problem-solve.

Frequently, the symptom is not the problem. Issues that clients’ aren’t aware of may eventually surface and need to be addressed. In any intimate relationship, there are always at least six people involved: The couple and two sets of parents. Sometimes a sibling or grandparent plays an important emotional role, and in today’s family structure, there are often step-parents, too.

The past is usually at play when couples are very reactive to one another, and have trouble learning to communicate better. They may be “enmeshed” emotionally and need individual support or therapy to separate their thoughts and feelings from one another. Deeper work may be indicated around issues of autonomy, intimacy, trust, and fears of being smothered, controlled, or abandoned. Our early childhood is when we learn lessons about intimate relationships.

All people project past experiences onto present situations when there is an emotional trigger. Whether from childhood or past adult trauma, talking about these experiences in a safe counseling environment together with your partner engenders vulnerability and trust between the two of you. When you realize that your partner’s motivations aren’t personal to you, you can drop your defenses and begin to empathize. You then see your partner as vulnerable, rather than as an adversary, and good faith and good will can return.

Copyright Darlene Lancer, MFT, 2007. To learn more about counseling, visit Darlene Lancer’s website, www.darlenelancer.com, and read about couples counseling in Culver City. You can also get a FREE REPORT “From Self-Criticism to Self-Esteem.”

Can Mid-Life Crisis Counseling Help You Create a Better Future?

Joseph LeFevre — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 19:34:29 +0000

While the term “mid-life crisis” is often used as a clich, for those experiencing major life transitions a mid-life crisis is anything but just another off-hand expression. However, if dealt with effectively, you can avoid a crisis and use mid-life transitions to create new beginnings and a brighter future.

Most men and women experience some form of emotional transition in the middle of their lives. This transition period can involve reaching a point in life where you’ve achieved the success that should make you happy (marriage, relationships, job, house, kids, etc.) only to find yourself bored, restless and wanting something different, or it may be that you’ve reached the same stage of life only to discover you’ve yet to achieve your goals and fulfill your dreams.

Mid-life transitions generally involve reevaluating our lives and making some adjustments to the way we live. It is not uncommon for people going through a mid-life transition to:

Question past decisions

Feel dissatisfied with the lifestyle that was previously a source of happiness

Experience indifference towards the people and pursuits that used to provide pleasure

Become angry with their spouse and feel trapped in their relationship

Wonder about who they are and the direction they’re headed

Have difficulty making decisions about the future

Seek out change and adventure

Desire new relationships

While these thoughts and feelings, and the transitions they lead to, don’t always bring about a crisis, if they are not adequately addressed a crisis is likely to result… a crisis that can be unproductive and even destructive to one’s relationships and one’s life.

External factors, such as work or relationship stress, the loss of a parent or loved one, low self-esteem, and unresolved childhood issues, can make mid-life transitions even more difficult and make it more likely that a crisis will emerge.

Even for those who don’t reach a crisis, mid-life transitions can easily present emotional challenges that lead to anxiety, depression, and the need for professional counseling or therapy.

How Can Mid-Life Counseling Help?

In our teens, our 20s, and our 30s, our future lies in front of us and all of our wants, hopes, and dreams can be realized in the years ahead. But something happens when we transition into our 40s and 50s. We experience a new sense of urgency about life and the direction in which we’re headed. We recognize that, if we’re going to achieve our goals, fulfill our dreams, and change our lives, we need to take action today.

But how do you successfully create the change you seek? Do you just struggle through it on your own or do you try something different?

We are all surrounded by expectations: the expectations of family and friends, career demands, and societal values, to name but a few. Sometimes we hold ourselves back because we believe we shouldn’t think or act in certain ways. While some thoughts and actions may not be in our best interest, exploring them and uncovering the underlying beliefs and desires that lead to them can be extremely beneficial, and mid-life crisis counseling can help.

If you’re going to successfully transition into the second half of your life and create the future you desire, you need to explore your own expectations and those of others, take a closer look at what you’re doing and why you’re doing it, and determine what would give you a greater sense of happiness, contentment, and personal fulfillment.

You need to know who you really are and what you want out of life. It’s during our 40s and 50s that we really come to grips with these issues, and it’s a very personal journey.

As we struggle with what all this means and what we’re going to do about it, we realize the need to make different choices. But change can be difficult. Change involves risk and uncertainty; but change is also an inevitable part of life that allows us to discover who we really are.

When transitions occur, we need to give up our old definitions of the world and our old ways of doing things. Only by doing so can we embark on a journey of new priorities with optimism for the future.

In addition to helping you overcome work and relationship stress, deal with the loss of a parent or loved one, and increase your self-esteem, mid-life counseling and therapy provides a confidential environment in which you can objectively explore your thoughts, feelings, and desires, determine the changes you need to make, and start taking action.

I know what it’s like to have unfulfilled hopes and dreams, to want more out of life and to not know how to get from where you are to where you want to be. Professional counseling and therapy can and does make a difference.

You can discover what you truly want and learn how to create it. Mid-life crisis and transitions counseling and therapy can help you ask the right questions and start taking the steps you need to create the future that’s right for you!

To learn more about choosing a psychotherapist, visit Felita Fox’s website on counseling in Los Altos.

Three Steps To Improving Communication In Your Marriage

Carol Ann — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 08:16:59 +0000

The majority of all marriage problems are related to the lack of effective communication between spouses. Although if you were to ask each spouse separately how their communication skills are they would assure you that there is no problems. Unfortunately their spouses will have something very different to say.

A lack of communication, however, is actually something that can be resolved relatively simply and one of the best ways to resolve it is to set up communication rules. This means basically guidelines that will help improve the effectiveness of your communication as a couple.

1. Have A Speaking Stick- It is often helpful to have a speaking stick in the home when you need to have a conversation with your spouse and want to be sure that you are being heard and understood, as well as making sure your partner gets their chance to speak. When you utilize a speaking stick, only the person with the stick is allowed to speak and therefore you eliminate talking at the same time and not hearing what your partner is saying and vise versa.

3. Stay On Track With Your Conversation- A lot of times while a couple attempts to communicate they begin calling down additional events from their past. They have such a history together that one matter extends to another and therefore eventually back into a controversy. Dealing exclusively with one matter at a time could genuinely assist in centering the communicating to ensure that both spouses are on the same page.

3. Think Before You Speak- Attempt to not discuss issues instantly, as an alternative have a waiting period. Generally as something first comes about everybody can be a bit more defensive as well as roused. Making a special day and time to sit down and address issues for the week, serves as a more beneficial way to discuss situations. After a brief time has elapsed you’ll in all probability be better capable to converse about the issue without converting the communicating into a fired up confrontation.

Avoid marriage problems by looking at the advice on www.lightyourfire.com. It is a place where you can read advice and testimonies as well as purchase programs that are a form of in home marriage counseling.

What Makes For A Successful Marriage

Carol Ann — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 04:10:52 +0000

Although you can click on thousands of articles that will tell you all about marriage counselor, there are not so many clicks that will bring you to an article on how to have a successful marriage. Many feel that if there are no problems you will be fine, but when a problem does arise they need to work extra hard at fixing it. Why not start working on your marriage now? Having a successful marriage is a simple task, just by following the ABC’s of marriage outlined below.

A- It is important to treat each other with respect ALWAYS. One of the most important aspects of any marriage is love, however if you do not add respect and kindness into the mix, love will not be enough. Without respect for one another you will find that their will be a breakdown in communication and your marriage may begin collapse. Respect is the structure of all marriages, and without it there is not a marriage that can strive.

B- It is simple for two people to have sex, it is done all the time. However, it is not simple to BE someones friend, and this is what you want to be for your spouse. Your spouse must be your best friend, and someone that you tell your deepest desires and secrets to. You want to be able to have a feeling of trust and security with your spouse, as this is the major component to have a long and happy marriage.

C- Always be willing to CARRY your spouse up the difficult hills of life, as well as being willing to allow your spouse to carry your at your times of need. Everyone faces a personal tragedy in their life and during those times it is important to have someone that is strong for them.

S- Remember that your marriage is a SACRED union and should always be in the forefront of your life. You need to treat your marriage like it is special and a unique relationship that will ensure your happiness together for the rest of your life.

If you are experiencing marriage problems, check out www.lightyourfire.com immediately. We will help you avoid divorce, and and remove the need for you to look up save my marriage on the internet.