“I thought marriage and having a family would really be more about sharing and having fun together” “What I am finding is that it feels like all the light and energy have been sucked out of me, and I am miserable and feeling hopeless!” So spoke a mother of four struggling with depression and intense feelings of inadequacy. Read the rest of this entry »
As a wife, mother, and counselor, I am still simply a woman…a woman who has, and is currently, battling the emotional distress, physical and mental fight of infertility. I found the article Infertility and Emotional Resilience very interesting. Read the rest of this entry »
Many people have experienced horrible and terrifying moments that have burned painful memories and associated emotions deep within their psyche. An example of this might be the husband that finds his wife has been unfaithful to the marriage vows and is now pregnant with another man’s child; perhaps the mother that discovers her new husband has been molesting her daughter. These horrible experiences create emotional and psychological scars that interrupt and interfere with living a stable and satisfying life. Read the rest of this entry »
One of the most significant aspects of this book is that it presents a structured way to form and maintain positive therapeutic relationships between the client and the therapist. It shows a frank and straightforward way to be respectful and help the client find the strengths and abilities to navigate problems and build a future of positive possibilities.
A common challenge faced by couples that are having marital difficulty is a pattern of starting conversations in a harsh or defensive tone. Writer and researcher, John Gottman, referred to this as harsh start up. This is when an attempt to connect with one’s partner starts out with a negative, blaming or critical way, which of course has the outcome of creating conflict, pain and unhappiness. Read the rest of this entry »
I took an urgent call recently from a young man who was in despair. He blurted out in a rush “how can I save my marriage?”
For the next ten minutes we talked about his marital difficulty; what he had already attempted to resolve the conflicts in his marriage, what he noticed about what made things worse or better. As we discussed his particular marriage issues it became increasingly clear that there were some marital problems that needed immediate attention.
One of the things that are really important in therapy is that we have an understanding for what’s really happening. What that takes is an understanding of the problem geography.
I’m using geography as the metaphor of the problem at hand. If you think about geography you want to know about the latitude and longitude, the weather, what kind of flora is growing there, who lives there and you want to know the basics of what is going on in that geographic region. Read the rest of this entry »
I had a couple come in for marriage counseling who were having a lot of problems communicating. They fought constantly. Their marriage was in crisis.
He was an engineer; he talked very logic-based, very reason-based. She was all emotion and everything was an emotional thing for her. He was really attracted to that in the beginning and she was attracted to him because he was organized and logical guy.
Eight years later, they’re no longer attracted to each other. So they talked about what they felt like they needed to do which was work on their ability to communicate with each other and hear each other in the language that they used. Read the rest of this entry »
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