marital therapy
What Supports 'Change'?
Nov. 28, 2018 04:34 PM Filed in: Personal Growth
As my couple therapy clients will attest to, I have my biases and I express them as such because I never want my clients to simply accept my perspective without checking in with themselves about theirs. If we are in disagreement we can then have a collaborative and compassionate conversation about the impasse. That is Collaborative Couple Therapy in a nutshell: People often disagree and, even so, we can still maintain connection as we address the difficulty.
When it comes to increasing the likelihood of favorable change in your relationship (or, for that matter, within yourself or in the environment) I start with a set of foundational beliefs:
Compassion Is More Helpful Than Anger
Although anger can be a motivator for some people within a limited context, it can’t be sustained for extended periods of time without causing harm in one way or another. Compassion, and I focus on self-compassion in particular, invokes friendliness and ‘turning toward’ life rather than pushing against our experiences. The more we are able to cultivate self-compassion, the greater our ability to face all challenges with kindness and curiosity.
It’s OK To Feel Anything You Feel
This is difficult for a lot of people to fully embrace. When I’m OK with anything I feel I can acknowledge and accept the fullness of my humanness, my experience of myself, without shame, guilt or self-condemnation (although, on a meta-level, I can also acknowledge and accept those negative feelings as well). For most of us this ‘OKness’ is, more or less, a continual work in progress.
One reason some people may feel alarmed by this concept is that they fear they may act-out in harmful or hurtful ways once they allow themselves to accept particularly undesirable feelings; the opposite is usually true. All feelings have energy behind them and if you try to ignore, deny, or repress any feeling its energy will eventually express itself in unconscious ways. Accepting your feelings, even unpleasant ones, creates space to respond in creative and decisive ways (with compassion). It’s also important to remember that ‘feeling’ and ‘doing’ are two different things.
Orient To Solutions
When faced with a problem, it’s easy to primarily focus on wanting that problem to stop. “Stop yelling at me” and “I wish I wasn’t so shy” are common types of problems people experience. Orienting to solutions means learning how to better express how you’d like things to be through increasing something or moving toward something rather than away from something. “Please lower your voice” and “I’d like to feel more relaxed in groups” are examples of solutions to these problems. Expressing a solution provides a more specific guide toward something desirable and presupposes the possibility for change. The better you can get at envisioning solutions the more likely you are to reach something approximating your desired solution.
~Doug
When it comes to increasing the likelihood of favorable change in your relationship (or, for that matter, within yourself or in the environment) I start with a set of foundational beliefs:
- Compassion is more helpful than anger
- It’s OK to feel anything you feel
- Orienting to ‘solutions’ rather than to ‘problems’ is most effective.
Compassion Is More Helpful Than Anger
Although anger can be a motivator for some people within a limited context, it can’t be sustained for extended periods of time without causing harm in one way or another. Compassion, and I focus on self-compassion in particular, invokes friendliness and ‘turning toward’ life rather than pushing against our experiences. The more we are able to cultivate self-compassion, the greater our ability to face all challenges with kindness and curiosity.
It’s OK To Feel Anything You Feel
This is difficult for a lot of people to fully embrace. When I’m OK with anything I feel I can acknowledge and accept the fullness of my humanness, my experience of myself, without shame, guilt or self-condemnation (although, on a meta-level, I can also acknowledge and accept those negative feelings as well). For most of us this ‘OKness’ is, more or less, a continual work in progress.
One reason some people may feel alarmed by this concept is that they fear they may act-out in harmful or hurtful ways once they allow themselves to accept particularly undesirable feelings; the opposite is usually true. All feelings have energy behind them and if you try to ignore, deny, or repress any feeling its energy will eventually express itself in unconscious ways. Accepting your feelings, even unpleasant ones, creates space to respond in creative and decisive ways (with compassion). It’s also important to remember that ‘feeling’ and ‘doing’ are two different things.
Orient To Solutions
When faced with a problem, it’s easy to primarily focus on wanting that problem to stop. “Stop yelling at me” and “I wish I wasn’t so shy” are common types of problems people experience. Orienting to solutions means learning how to better express how you’d like things to be through increasing something or moving toward something rather than away from something. “Please lower your voice” and “I’d like to feel more relaxed in groups” are examples of solutions to these problems. Expressing a solution provides a more specific guide toward something desirable and presupposes the possibility for change. The better you can get at envisioning solutions the more likely you are to reach something approximating your desired solution.
~Doug